Difference between element(...) and element(...).getWebElement() in Protractor

Question

• Why we need element(...).getWebElement() over element(...) when both works exactly the same
• Why two APIs for the same functionality

Answer 1

Protractor is a convenient wrapper around WebDriverJS - javascript selenium bindings.

• element(...) would result into an ElementFinder instance introduced in Protractor
• element(...).getWebElement() would result into a WebElement instance from WebDriverJS. Basically, this gives you access to the pure "bare-metal" WebElement.

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The most common use-case for using getWebElement() is when you need to pass an ElementFinder as a script argument - currently you have to call getWebElement() for this to work:

var elm = element(by.id("myid")); 
browser.executeScript("arguments[0].click()", elm.getWebElement());

There is an open feature-request to be able to pass ElementFinder directly:

browser.executeScript("arguments[0].click()", elm);  // not gonna work as of now