0

The application which I'm testing is fast developing, and new features keep being adding, requiring changes to the testing XPaths. So the selenium scripts which were successful before now failed as the XPaths have changed. Is there any reliable way to locate element (which will never change)? FYI, I thought of using ID's but my application does not have ID's for each and every element as it is not recommended to give ID's in the code.

kjhughes
  • 106,133
  • 27
  • 181
  • 240
Min
  • 95
  • 1
  • 1
  • 8
  • css selector is more readable and should be faster http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16788310/what-is-the-difference-between-css-selector-xpath-which-is-betteraccording-t – Ran Adler May 07 '15 at 13:51

3 Answers3

2

I feel the following is the hierarchy for choosing the element in selenium
1.id
2.class name
3.name
4.css
5.xpath
6.link text
7.Partial link text
8.tag name
In case of changing DOM structure you can try using functions like text() and contains(). The following link explains basic of the mentioned function.
http://www.guru99.com/using-contains-sbiling-ancestor-to-find-element-in-selenium.html
The following link can be referred for Writing reliable locators
https://blog.mozilla.org/webqa/2013/09/26/writing-reliable-locators-for-selenium-and-webdriver-tests/
Hope this helps you.

Programmer
  • 455
  • 5
  • 18
1

If you cannot impose @id discipline on the interface that keeps changing, one alternative is to use CSS selectors.

Another alternative to write more robust XPath:

  1. Be smart about using the descendent-or-self axis (//):

    Rather than /some/long/and/brittle/path/uniquepart use //uniquepart or //uniquepart/further/path to bypass that which is likely to change.

  2. Don't overspecify label matching.

    Use case-insensitive contains(), and try to match critical parts of labels that are likely to remain invariant across interface changes.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
kjhughes
  • 106,133
  • 27
  • 181
  • 240
0

One other way I can think if is that you can load your page elements in to DOM and use DOM element navigation. It is a good practice to have id on elements though. If you have to use the xpath way then it is a good practice to split the path to keep the common path separately and adding the leaf elements as needed. In a way change in xpath triggering the test to fail is a good indication of catching the changes.

jags
  • 176
  • 5