Selenium WebDriver Basics

Locators – ID, Name, XPath, CSS

Learning Outcome

Recall

Selenium WebDriver Basics

In manual testing, we interact with web elements of software applications by performing actions just like an end user would:

1. Click buttons, links, checkboxes, and radio buttons.

2. Enter text into input fields or text areas.

3. Select options from dropdown menus, checkboxes, or radio buttons.

4. Read text, labels, messages, or notifications displayed on the page.

5.Navigate between pages using links, menus, or buttons

In automation testing, we cannot interact with web elements manually. To automate actions, we must precisely locate each web element on the web page.

Selenium locators are the key concept for this. They allow us to identify and access elements so that automated scripts can perform actions like click, type, select, or read text reliably.

Mastering locators is essential for building robust and maintainable automation tests.

Scenario: Finding the Right Room in a Big Office

Imagine a huge office building with thousands of rooms. Each room represents a web element—buttons, text boxes, links, checkboxes.

If a visitor (automation script) wants to reach a specific room, just knowing the building is not enough. They need the exact room number, floor, and directions.

• Web page = office building

• Web elements = rooms

Selenium locators serve this purpose—they act as the precise coordinates that guide the script to the exact element.

​Without locators, the script is like a visitor wandering aimlessly, unable to perform any meaningful action.

With locators, the script can interact efficiently, click buttons, type text, and read information—just like a visitor reaching the right office without confusion.

• Selenium locators = room numbers / addresses

• Automation script = visitor navigating to the room

Why Do We Need Selenium Locators?

Automation scripts cannot see the page visually like humans.

To interact with elements (buttons, text boxes, links), scripts need their exact location.

Locators act as the address to find web elements on a page.

Why Selenium?

Example XML:

XPath (short for XML Path Language) is a query language used to navigate and select elements or attributes in an XML (or HTML) document.

It’s widely used in web scraping, automation tools like Selenium, and XML parsing.

XPath works like a path to locate nodes in a document structure.

<bookstore>

 <book>

   <title>Harry Potter</title>

   <price>29.99</price>

 </book>

</bookstore>

Example XPath:

/bookstore/book/title

Types of xpath

Absolute xpath

Relative xpath

Begins from the root of the HTML document and specifies the complete path to the element.

It’s not as flexible and can break if the page structure changes.

It is a direct way to find webelement as it starts with single forward slash[/].It can select webelement from root node.

Example

 /html/body/div[1]/div/div[3]/div[2]/div[2]/form/div[2]/input

Disadvantage

If there are any changes made in absolute path the xpath get Fail

It Starts from a specific element and navigates through the DOM hierarchy to locate the desired element.

It’s more flexible and resilient to changes in the page structure.

It starts from double forward slash[//] which mean it can search webelement from anywhere on webpage starts in between HTML DOM Structure concise in size.

Example

//*[@id="txtPassword"]

Relative XPath Starts from a specific element and navigates through the DOM hierarchy to locate the desired element.

It’s more flexible and resilient to changes in the page structure.

It starts from double forward slash[//] which mean it can search webelement from anywhere on webpage starts in between HTML DOM Structure concise in size.

Example

//*[@id="txtPassword"]

Common XPath Locator Strategies

Example

//input[@id='email']

1. By Attribute

//tagname[@attribute='value']

2. By Text

//tagname[text()='Login']

3. By Contains

//tagname[contains(@attribute,'value')]

Example

4. By Starts-with

//input[starts-with(@name,'user')]

//input[@type='text' and @name='username']

6. Using Index

(//input[@type='text'])[1]

By using Xpath axes we can navigate throughout the DOM page like top to bottom and bottom to top and we can find any elements on the web page even though we don’t have the attribute .

Following are terminologies.

Self node :-from which node from the DOM we are starting is called self node. Or element. i. e main node

Ancestor :- Parent of Parent is Ancestor(Grand)

Parent

child

Descendent---child of child

Siblings –elements from same parent

Preceding sibling—-- nodes come before

following siblings —--after nodes  

Relative Locators Or User Friendly Locators

User friendly locators or its also called as Relative locators .

Following are the Relative locators:

So we can find element by ReleativeLocator class having method with(By.TagName()) followed by above locators.(or methods)

below()

toLeftOf()

toRightOf

above()

near()

Summary

Which locator allows navigation through the DOM structure using paths?

Which locator allows navigation through the DOM structure using paths?