CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaselenium-webdriverarraylist
Soumyansh Gupta
Soumyansh Gupta

Reputation: 121

Can we use ArrayList to store WebElements?

Below code works fine when i use List instead of ArrayList,

ArrayList<WebElement> list= driver.findElements(locator);

I want to understand why I can't use ArrayList here? Is it used to store specific type of elements?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 5892

Answers (3)

acdcjunior
acdcjunior

Reputation: 135802

WebDriver#findElements(...) returns a java.util.List:

java.util.List<WebElement> findElements(By by)

Find all elements within the current page using the given mechanism. This method is affected by the 'implicit wait' times in force at the time of execution. When implicitly waiting, this method will return as soon as there are more than 0 items in the found collection, or will return an empty list if the timeout is reached.

Parameters: by - The locating mechanism to use

Returns: A list of all WebElements, or an empty list if nothing matches

Knowing that List is an interface and ArrayList is a concrete implementation (class) of that interface, the documentation does not specify if the List returned is an ArrayList or not. If it were you could simply cast it to ArrayList.

So, since the concrete type is unknown...

...if you want an ArrayList, you have to construct one from the list returned:

ArrayList<WebElement> list = new ArrayList<>(driver.findElements(locator));

That's the only reliable method. Casting may work for some driver implementations but not for others.

Upvotes: 4

Soumyansh Gupta
Soumyansh Gupta

Reputation: 121

Got the answer , findElements has return type as list and therefore the code worked after casting

ArrayList<WebElement> list=(ArrayList<WebElement>) driver.findElements(locator);

Upvotes: 0

so-random-dude
so-random-dude

Reputation: 16515

List is an Interface and ArrayList is an implementation. Similarly, List has other implementations too. So what driver.findElements(locator) method returns may be some other implementation of List Interface. Of course, this is just an educated guess, as I don't know what findElements method returns

Upvotes: 0

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