Selenium locators are used to uniquely identify the HTML elements and interact with these HTML elements such as button,text boxes , links etc. in the Document Object Model (DOM) during automation.
Selenium WebDriver supports 8 primary locator types through the By class.
- ID: This locator locates the elements using the id attribute . This is the fastest and most reliable methods because IDs should be unique on a page.
Example:
driver.findElement(By.id(“signin-button”));
- Name : This locator locates the target elements using the name attribute , commonly used for form controls like input fields .
Example :
driver.findElement(By.name(“gift”));
- Tag Name : This locator locates the elements based on their HTML tag (e.g. <a> , <div> , <button>, <input> ) , which is useful for finding groups of similar elements .
Example :
driver.findElement(By.tagName(“input”));
- Link Text : This locator is used specifically for anchor tags (<a> ) , it matches the exact visible text of a hyperlink.
Example :
driver.findElement(By.linkText(“Submit now ” ) );
- Partial Link Text : This locator is similar to Link Text but allows matching a substring of the hyperlink’s text .
Example :
driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText(“Submit”));
- CSS Selector : This locator uses CSS syntax to find elements. It is more flexible than ID or Nmae and faster than Xpath.
Example :
WebElement signinButton=driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(“#signinBtn”));
signinButton.click();
- Xpath : This locator is very useful for navigating the XML/HTML structures . It can locate elements relative to others and find them based on complex attributes .
Example :
driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//input[@type=’text’]”));
Advanced Locator Concepts :
- Relative Locators (Selenium 4+ ) : Relative Locators allow to find elements based on their position relative to other elements using terms like above , below , toRightOf , toLeftOf and near.
- Chaining and Multiple Matches : Use findElements() method to return the list of all matching elements instead of just the first one .