Selenium Webdriver Tips and Tricks – Episode 1

Hi All, from now on, I want to share “Selenium Webdriver Tips and Tricks” series. I hope and believe that it will be a very exciting and interesting series and this post is the first episode of this appealing series. In this episode we will go over below headlines:

• How to overcome “:” css selector problem for JSF web applications?
• How to do Human-Like Typing in Selenium?
• How to get a web element by text with Selenium WebDriver?
• How to interrogate an element by xpath using JavaScript get element method?
• How to upload an image with Robot Class?

1) How to overcome “:” css selector problem for JFS web applications?

Answer: instead of : we should use its hexadecimal equivalent which is \3A

Example:

Invalid: #basicInformationForm:propertyName:propertyName_sub:propertyName_sub_inp

Valid: #basicInformationForm\3ApropertyName\3ApropertyName_sub\3ApropertyName_sub_inp

Reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/122238/handling-a-colon-in-an-element-id-in-a-css-selector

2) How to do Human-Like Typing in Selenium?

Answer: You can use below method to do human-like writing

protected void writeLikeHuman (By by, String text){
        //Add Explicit and Asynchronous Wait
        //I only add explicit wait
        wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(by));
        String str = text;
        System.out.println("Text: " + text);
        WebElement element = driver.findElement(by);
        element.click();
        element.clear();

        for (int i = 0; i < str.length(); i++){
            char c = str.charAt(i);
            String s = new StringBuilder().append(c).toString();
            System.out.println("Character: " + s);
            try {
                Thread.sleep(50);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            element.sendKeys(s);
        }
    }

3) How to get a web element by text with Selenium WebDriver?

Answer: CSS does not allow this, you need to use XPath.

//div[contains(text(),’noreply@somedomain.com’)]

Check also CSS/Xpath reference from below link.
https://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/net-framework/xpath-css-dom-and-selenium-the-rosetta-stone/

4) How to interrogate an element by XPath using JavaScript get element method?

Answer: You can use below code template to get element bt xpath using JavaScript

document.evaluate('XPATH HERE', document, null, XPathResult.FIRST_ORDERED_NODE_TYPE, null).singleNodeValue;

For example logo of Kariyer.net’s Xpath is “.//*[@id=’Header’]/div[2]/div[1]/a/img”

Reference: https://coderwall.com/p/u2amea/javascript-get-element-by-xpath 

5) How to upload an image with Robot Class?

Answer: You can use below utility method to upload images with Robot Class.

 public static void uploadImageWithRobot(){
        try {
            Thread.sleep(500);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        String text = roomImage;
        StringSelection stringSelection = new StringSelection(text);
        Clipboard clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
        clipboard.setContents(stringSelection, null);

        Robot robot = null;
        try {
            robot = new Robot();
        } catch (AWTException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        robot.delay(250);
        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);
        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);
        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);
        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_V);
        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_V);
        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);
        robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);
        robot.delay(150);
        robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);
    }

First episode’s end.

Note: Special thanks to Canberk Akduygu for his contributions.

-Onur

Onur Baskirt

Onur Baskirt is a Software Engineering Leader with international experience in world-class companies. Now, he is a Software Engineering Lead at Emirates Airlines in Dubai.