Working with Page Factory and Webdriver

We have been seeing examples of webdriver being implemented across the testing world, but is just knowing how to use the APIs all about knowing Webdriver? the answer is NO! Let us go one step further, let us know about Page Factory..where every time you access a WebElement it will perform a search to find the element on the page.

You can find the API for page factory here:
http://selenium.googlecode.com/git/docs/api/java/org/openqa/selenium/support/PageFactory.html

This has some advantages:

• When the PageFactory is initialised the proxies are configured, but the WebElements are not found at that point (so you won't get a NoSuchElementException)
• Every time you use a WebElement it will go and find it again so you shouldn't see StaleElementException's

But when you use the @CacheLookup annotation, which is losing you the second benefit as it will find the element once and then keep a reference to it, you are now far more likely to see StaleElementExceptions.
One more thing you need to know handy is usage of @FindBy annotation, Do not get confused on all this terms, we will hit them one by one.


1.@FindBy

This is used to mark a field on a Page Object to indicate an alternative mechanism for locating the element or a list of elements. Used in conjunction withPageFactory this allows users to quickly and easily create PageObjects.You can either use this annotation by specifying both "how" and "using" or by specifying one of the location strategies (eg: "id") with an appropriate value to use. Both options will delegate down to the matching By methods in By class.

For example, these two annotations point to the same element: @FindBy(id = "foobar") WebElement foobar; @FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "foobar") WebElement foobar; and these two annotations point to the same list of elements: @FindBy(tagName = "a") List links; @FindBy(how = How.TAG_NAME, using = "a") List links; So, We are taking about making the test looks simple and easy to maintain using @FindBy, we will see more example soon!



2. PageFactory.initElements

Instantiate an instance of the given class, and set a lazy proxy for each of the WebElement and List fields that have been declared, assuming that the field name is also the HTML element's "id" or "name". This means that for the class: public class Page { private WebElement submit; } there will be an element that can be located using the xpath expression "//*[@id='submit']" or "//*[@name='submit']" By default, the element or the list is looked up each and every time a method is called upon it. To change this behaviour, simply annotate the field with the CacheLookup. To change how the element is located, use the FindBy annotation. This method will attempt to instantiate the class given to it, preferably using a constructor which takes a WebDriver instance as its only argument or falling back on a no-arg constructor. An exception will be thrown if the class cannot be instantiated.

 public class SignInTest extends TestCase
 {
 @Test
 public void SignInWithValidCredentialsTest() {
 SignInPage signInPage = PageFactory.initElements(driver, SignInPage.class);
 MainPage mainPage = signInPage.signInWithValidCredentials("sbrown", "sbrown"); assertThat(mainPage.getTitle(), is(equalTo(driver.getTitle())));
}
}
Let us now try the example page used in http://www.whiteboxtest.com/selenium-test1.php
You can see some links, button etc which can be used for test purpose. For this page we have the following: @FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "id-012") WebElement verifybutton;
 public void clickButtonPresentByID_id012() {
 verifybutton.click();
} // Find and click selenium-test2 public SeleniumTest2 clickSeleniumTest2() { // Find the text link by its name WebElement someElement = driver.findElement(By.linkText("selenium-test2"));
// Click the link text someElement.click();
return PageFactory.initElements(driver, SeleniumTest2.class);
}

For http://www.whiteboxtest.com/selenium-test2.php page following changes done in page object class
@FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "q2") WebElement textBox;
// Find the text box by ID public void inputTextBox(String txt) { textBox.clear(); textBox.sendKeys(txt);
}
// Find and click selenium-test1 public SeleniumTest1 clickSeleniumTest1() { // Find the text link by its name WebElement someElement = driver.findElement(By.linkText("selenium-test1"));
// Click the link text someElement.click();
return PageFactory.initElements(driver, SeleniumTest1.class);
}

Test cases code following changes done
SeleniumTest1 seleniumTest1 = PageFactory.initElements(driver, SeleniumTest1.class); seleniumTest1.clickButtonPresentByID_id012(); SeleniumTest2 seleniumTest2 = seleniumTest1.clickSeleniumTest2(); seleniumTest2.inputTextBox("hello"); seleniumTest1 = seleniumTest2.clickSeleniumTest1();

Let us look at the complete code here:
testMain.java:

 package test.selenium.pagefactory;
 import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.PageFactory;

public class testMain { public static void main(String[] args)
{ // Create a new instance of the Firefox driver
 WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); // Now use the firefox instance driver to open a page URL driver.get("http://www.whiteboxtest.com/selenium-test1.php"); // driver.navigate().to("http://www.google.com"); alternative to open a // URL SeleniumTest1 seleniumTest1 = PageFactory.initElements(driver, SeleniumTest1.class); seleniumTest1.clickButtonPresentByID_id012(); SeleniumTest2 seleniumTest2 = seleniumTest1.clickSeleniumTest2(); seleniumTest2.inputTextBox("hello"); seleniumTest1 = seleniumTest2.clickSeleniumTest1(); // Close and clean firefox driver instance driver.quit();
}}

SeleniumTest1.java

package test.selenium.pagefactory;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.*;

public class SeleniumTest1 {
WebDriver driver;
@FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "id-012")
WebElement verifybutton;

public SeleniumTest1(WebDriver driver) {
this.driver = driver;
// you may Check title of the page and assert if page title is incorrect
System.out.println("Page title is: " + driver.getTitle());
}

public void clickButtonPresentByID_id012() {
verifybutton.click();
}
// Find and click selenium-test2
public SeleniumTest2 clickSeleniumTest2() {
// Find the text link by its name
WebElement someElement = driver.findElement(By.linkText("selenium-test2"));
// Click the link text
someElement.click();
return PageFactory.initElements(driver, SeleniumTest2.class);
}
// Find and click selenium-test3
}

SeleniumTest2.java

 package test.selenium.pagefactory;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.*;
public class SeleniumTest2 { WebDriver driver; @FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "q2") WebElement textBox;
 public SeleniumTest2(WebDriver driver) { this.driver = driver; // you may Check title of the page and assert if page title is incorrect System.out.println("Page title is: " + driver.getTitle());
}
 // Find the text box by ID
 public void inputTextBox(String txt) {
 textBox.clear();
 textBox.sendKeys(txt);
}
 // Find and click selenium-test1
 public SeleniumTest1 clickSeleniumTest1()
{ // Find the text link by its name 
WebElement someElement = driver.findElement(By.linkText("selenium-test1"));
 // Click the link text someElement.click(); return new SeleniumTest1(driver);
}
 // Find and click selenium-test3
}