In this tutorial, we will go through what are Locators and different type of locators in Selenium. The prerequisite of any automation tool is to locate the web elements on a web page. Buy WHY?
One of the example is that suppose you want to login to gmail using any automation tool. Therefore, in this case you need to enter your email or phone and click on Next button. Here, Email Textbox and Next button are web elements.
Web Elements can be anything link TextBox, CheckBox, Radio Buttons, Links, Dropdowns, Image, soon.
What is Locator?
Locator is unique address of any web element on web page.
Types of Locators in Selenium
In this tutorial, we will use http://www.facebook.com for showing the use of different locators
How to find web elements?
1) Locating by ID – Find the input element with ID.
Syntax
driver.findElement(By.id(“email”))
2) Locating by ClassName – Find the input element with name of class
Syntax
driver.findElement(By.ClassName("inputtext"))
3) Locating by TagName – Find the input element with TagName
Syntax
driver.findElement(By.tagName("select"))
4) Locating by Name – Find the input element with matching name attribute.
Syntax
driver.findElement(By.name("email"))
5) Locating by Linktext – Find the link element with matching visible text
Syntax
driver.findElement(By.linkText("Forgot account?"))
6) Partial Link Text – Find the link element with partial matching visible text
Syntax
driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Forgot "))
7) XPath – Full form of XPath is XML Path. It is used to locate a web element on a web page using HTML DOM structure
Syntax
By.xpath("//tagname[@Attribute = ‘value’]")
//: select the current node.
tagname: name of the tag of a particular node.
@: to select attribute.
Attribute: name of the attribute of the node.
Value: value of the attribute
There are 2 types of Xpath:-
1) Absolute Path
2) Relative Path
Absolute Path – It is the direct way to find any element. But as name suggest, it needs to be absolute. Any change made in the path will fail the xpath, result tool will not be able to locate the we element on the page.
Syntax
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='yDmH0d']/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div/div/div/div/div/div/ form/content/section/div/content/div/div/div/div/div/input"))
Relative Path –Relative XPath begins from the current location and is prefixed with a “//”. It starts from the middle of the DOM structure. To know more about XPath, click here
Syntax
By.xpath("//input[@name='identifier']")
7) CSS Selectors – CSS Selectors are string patterns used to identify an element based on a combination of HTML tag, id, class, and attributes. Locating by CSS Selector is more complicated than the previous methods, but it is the most common locating strategy of advanced Selenium users because it can access even those elements that have no ID or name. To know more about CSS, click here
Below is an example that shows how to use different locators. In this example, we have used Id, name, className, tagName, partialLinkText and LinkText locators.
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Automation_Practice_Form {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver",
"C:\\Users\\Vibha\\Desktop\\SeleniumKT\\drivers\\geckodriver-v0.27.0-win64\\geckodriver.exe");
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(120, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.get("https://opensource-demo.orangehrmlive.com/");
driver.manage().window().maximize();
// Locate link by partialLinkText
String PartialLinkText_Text = driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Orange")).getText();
System.out.println("Text of PartialLinkText Locator is ->" + PartialLinkText_Text);
// Locate link by LinkText
String LinkText_Text = driver.findElement(By.linkText("Forgot your password?")).getText();
System.out.println("Text of LinkText Locator is ->" + LinkText_Text);
// Locate FirstName by name
driver.findElement(By.name("txtUsername")).sendKeys("Admin");
// Locate LastName by id
driver.findElement(By.id("txtPassword")).sendKeys("admin123");
// Locate options of DropDown by tagName
List linkName = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
System.out.println("List of Links:");
for (WebElement link : linkName) {
System.out.println(link.getText() + " - " +link.getAttribute("href"));
}
driver.close();
}
}
Output
Text of PartialLinkText Locator is ->OrangeHRM, Inc
Text of LinkText Locator is ->Forgot your password?
List of Links:
Forgot your password? - https://opensource-demo.orangehrmlive.com/index.php/auth/requestPasswordResetCode
OrangeHRM, Inc - http://www.orangehrm.com/
- http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=891077
- http://www.facebook.com/OrangeHRM
- http://twitter.com/orangehrm
- http://www.youtube.com/orangehrm
QA Automation Expert 
Very nice and informative article!
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Perfect example to explain ..
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Hi Vibha, your blogs are very informative. I have read all your blogs. Apart from Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Firefox, selenium use any other driver too?
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Thanks Nishant. Yes, apart from IE, Chrome and Firefox, there are other drivers too in Selenium.SafariDriverOperaDriverAndroidDriverIPhoneDriverHtmlUnitDriverMicrosoftEdgeDriverGhostDriver -WebDriver Wire Protocol for PhantomJSios-driverSelendroid – For mobile TestingBlackberry 10QtWebDriver – WebDriver implementation for QtjBrowserDriver – Web browser driver compatible with the Selenium WebDriver spec – headless, WebKit-based, pure Java
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I need to know the exact syntax of absolute xpath. Please help me.
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I have updated my blog for the syntax of Absolute Path. It looks like thisdriver.findElement(By.xpath(\”//*[@id='yDmH0d']/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div/div/div/div/div/div/ form/content/section/div/content/div/div/div/div/div/input\”)
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