Introduction

The success of automated GUI (Graphical User Interface) tests depends on identifying and locating GUI elements from the application under test and then performing operations and verifications on these elements to achieve the test flow. This boils down to the test tool's ability to recognize various GUI elements effectively.

Selenium WebDriver provides one of the advanced techniques for locating elements on web pages. Selenium's feature-rich API provides multiple locator strategies such as Name, ID, CSS selectors, XPath, and so on. We can also implement custom locator strategies for locating elements.

In this chapter, we will explore more on how to use locator strategies by starting with ID, Name, and Class.

In any web development project, it is always a good practice to assign attributes such as Name, IDs, or Class to GUI elements. This makes the application more testable and conforms to accessibility standards. However, following these practices is not always possible. For such scenarios, we have to use advanced locator strategies such as CSS selector and XPath.

While CSS selector and XPath are popular among Selenium users, CSS selector is highly recommended over XPath due to its simplicity, speed, and performance.