CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaselenium
DeZaelez
DeZaelez

Reputation: 31

How do I extract the recognition strategy of a Selenium Web Element during run time?

The problem I have is that my Page Object class finds all of the objects on the screen and then sends it to a more generic method to do the actual data entry. During this data entry process, some objects become stale and I get the "StaleElementException".

My plan is to catch that exception and attempt to re-find the element again.

Is there a way of extract the selection strategy from the runtime WebElement object other than doing a "object.toString()" and then parsing it?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 299

Answers (1)

JeffC
JeffC

Reputation: 25645

I use page objects by defining the locators at the top of the class, then the constructor that verifies that we're on the right page (etc), and then methods for each action available on the page. Here's a simple example for the Google search page.

GoogleSearchPage.java

public class GoogleSearchPage
{
    private WebDriver driver;
    private By waitForLocator = By.id("lst-ib"); // optional
    private By searchBoxLocator = By.id("lst-ib");
    private By searchButtonLocator = By.cssSelector("button[name='btnG']");
    private By feelingLuckyButtonLocator = By.id("gbqfbb");

    public GoogleSearchPage(WebDriver webDriver)
    {
        driver = webDriver;
        // wait for page to finish loading
        new WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(waitForLocator));

        // see if we're on the right page
        if (!driver.getCurrentUrl().contains("https://www.google.com"))
        {
            throw new IllegalStateException("This is not the Google search page. Current URL: " + driver.getCurrentUrl());
        }
    }

    public void doSearch(String searchString)
    {
        driver.findElement(searchBoxLocator).sendKeys(searchString);
        driver.findElement(searchButtonLocator).click();
    }
}

GoogleSearchTest.java

public class GoogleSearchTest
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
        driver.get("http://www.google.com");
        GoogleSearchPage googleSearchPage = new GoogleSearchPage(driver);
        googleSearchPage.doSearch("selenium");
        System.out.println(driver.getCurrentUrl().contains("#q=selenium"));
    }
}

This is obviously a super simple example but it shows one good way to create page objects that should significantly reduce the frequency of StaleElementExceptions and, in some cases, speed up your script execution because you only scrape what you need and move on.

Reduce the urge to provide a getX() and clickX() method for each and every element on the page. Instead favor task based methods. Ask yourself what tasks a user is going to want to accomplish on the page and provide methods to do those tasks. It will keep your page object API much cleaner and more clear in what it provides to the consumer (you and other script writers).

Upvotes: 1

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