Creating an object map for Selenium tests

So far, we have seen how the Selenium WebDriver API needs locator information to find the elements on the page. When a large suite of tests is created, a lot of locator information is duplicated in the test code. It becomes difficult to manage locator details when the number of tests increases. If any changes happen in the element locator, we need to find all the tests that use this locator and update these tests. This becomes a maintenance nightmare.

One way to overcome this problem is to use page objects and create a repository of pages as reusable classes.

There is another way to overcome this problem — by using object map. An object or a UI map is a mechanism that stores all the locators for a test suite in one place for easy modification when identifiers or paths to GUI elements change in the application under test. The test script then uses the object map to locate the elements to be tested.

Object maps help in making test script management much...