Navigation Commands in Selenium WebDriver are used to open a web page URL, and navigate to other web pages by clicking any element, Back, Forward, or Refresh the web page using the browser’s history. In this blog, we will discuss the below-mentioned commands.
1) Navigate
2) Forward
3) Back
4) Refresh
1) Navigate
This command loads a new web page in the current window as mentioned in the argument. This command accepts a string parameter and returns nothing.
This command performs the same action as the get() command.
Syntax:
to(String arg0):void
Command:
driver.navigate().to(URL);
2) Forward
This command acts as the same as clicking on the Forward button of any web browser. This command does not require any parameter, and void means return nothing.
Syntax:
forward(): void
Command:
driver.navigate().forward();
3) Back
This command acts the same as clicking on the Back button of any web browser. This command does not require any parameter, and void means return nothing.
Syntax:
back(): void
Command:
driver.navigate().back();
4) Refresh
This command refreshes the current page. This command does not require any parameter, and void means return nothing.
Syntax:
refresh(): void
Command:
driver.navigate().refresh();
How to use Navigation Commands in Selenium WebDriver:
I’m using Selenium 4.15.0 for this example.
- Create an instance of ChromeDriver() to handle Navigation commands.
- Wait until Page Load.
- Navigate to URL – https://selenium.dev
- Navigate to another URL.
- Navigate to the back page.
- Navigate to the forward page.
- Refresh the current page.
- Close the browser
import java.time.Duration;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
public class navigationCommandsDemo {
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.addArguments("--start-maximized");
options.setImplicitWaitTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(10));
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
driver.navigate().to("https://selenium.dev");
//Get the Title of web page
String PageTitle= driver.getTitle();
System.out.println("Title of Page 1 is : " + PageTitle);
Thread.sleep(2000);
System.out.println("Navigate to New Page 2");
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='main_navbar']/ul/li[4]/a/span")).click();
Thread.sleep(2000);
System.out.println("Navigate back to Old Page 1");
driver.navigate().back();
Thread.sleep(2000);
System.out.println("Navigate forward to New Page 2");
driver.navigate().forward();
Thread.sleep(2000);
System.out.println("Refresh the existing page");
driver.navigate().refresh();
//quit the browser
driver.quit();
}
}
The output of the above program is
QA Automation Expert 