Locators in Selenium IDE

Locators tell Selenium IDE which GUI elements ( say Text

Box , Buttons, Check Boxes etc) its needs to operate on.
Identification of correct GUI elements is a prerequisite to create an
automation script. But accurate identification of GUI elements is more
difficult than it sounds. Sometimes, you end up working with incorrect
GUI elements or no elements at all! Hence, Selenium provides a
number of Locators to precisely locate a GUI element
The different types of locator are:

ID
Name
Link Text
CSS Selector

Tag and ID

Tag and class

Tag and attribute

Tag, class, and attribute
Inner text
XPath

There are commands that do not need a locator (such as the "open"
command). However, most of them do need Locators.
The choice of locator depends largely on your Application Under
Test. In this tutorial we will toggle between facebook ,
newtours.demoaut on basis of locators that these applications support.
Likewise in you testing project you will select any of the above listed
locators based on your application support.

Locating by ID
This is the most common way of locating elements since ID's are
supposed to be unique for each element.

Target Format: id=id of the element

For this example, we will use Facebook as our test app because
Mercury Tours does not use ID attributes.
Step 1. Navigate to http://www.facebook.com. Inspect the "Email or
Phone" text box using Firebug and take note of its ID. In this case, the
ID is "email".

Step 2. Launch Selenium IDE and enter "id=email" in the Target box.
Click the Find button and notice that the "Email or Phone" text box
becomes highlighted with yellow and bordered with green, meaning,
Selenium IDE was able to locate that element correctly.

Locating by Name
Locating elements by name are very similar to locating by ID, except
that we use the "name=" prefix instead.
Target Format: name=name of the element
In the following demonstration, we will now use Mercury Tours because
all significant elements have names.
Step 1. Navigate to http://newtours.demoaut.com/ and use Firebug to
inspect the "User Name" text box. Take note of its name attribute.

Here, we see that the element's name is "username".

Step 2. In Selenium IDE, enter "name=username" in the Target box
and click the Find button. Selenium IDE should be able to locate the
User Name text box by highlighting it.

Locating by Name using Filters

Filters can be used when multiple elements have the same
name. Filters are additional attributes used to distinguish
elements with the same name.
Target Format: name=name_of_the_element filter=value_of_filter
Let's see an example Step 1. Log on to Mercury Tours using "tutorial" as the username and
password. It should take you to the Flight Finder page shown below.

Step 2. Using Firebug, notice that the Round Trip and One Way radio
buttons have the same name "tripType." However, they have different
VALUE attributes so we can use each of them as our filter.

Step 3.

We are going to access the One Way radio button first. Click the
first line on the Editor.

In the Command box of Selenium IDE, enter the command

"click".

In the Target box, enter "name=tripType value=oneway". The

"value=oneway" portion is our filter.

Step 4. Click the Find button and notice that Selenium IDE is able to
highlight the One Way radio button with green - meaning that we are
able to access the element successfully using its VALUE attribute.

Step 5. Press the "X" key in your keyboard to execute this click
command. Notice that the One Way radio button became selected.

You can do the exact same thing with the Round Trip radio button, this
time, using "name=tripType value=roundtrip" as your target.

Locating by Link Text

This type of locator applies only to hyperlink texts. We access the link
by prefixing our target with "link=" and then followed by the hyperlink
text.
Target Format: link=link_text

In this example, we shall access the "REGISTER" link found in the

Mercury Tours homepage.
Step 1.

First, make sure that you are logged off from Mercury Tours.

Go to Mercury Tours homepage.

Step 2.

Using Firebug, inspect the "REGISTER" link. The link text is found
between and tags.

In this case, our link text is "REGISTER". Copy the link text.

Step 3. Copy the link text in Firebug and paste it onto Selenium IDE's
Target box. Prefix it with "link=".

Step 4. Click on the Find button and notice that Selenium IDE was
able to highlight the REGISTER link correctly.

Step 5. To verify further, enter "clickAndWait" in the Command box

and execute it. Selenium IDE should be able to click on that REGISTER
link successfully and take you to the Registration page shown below.

Locating by CSS Selector

CSS Selectors are string patterns used to identify an element
based on a combination of HTML tag, id, class, and
attributes.Locating by CSS Selector is more complicated than
the previous methods, but it is the most common locating
strategy of advanced Selenium users because it can access
even those elements that have no ID or name.
CSS Selectors have many formats, but we will only focus on the most
common ones.

Tag and ID
Tag and class
Tag and attribute
Tag, class, and attribute
Inner text

When using this strategy, we always prefix the Target box with "css="
as will be shown on the following examples.

Locating by CSS Selector - Tag and ID

Again, we will use Facebook's Email text box in this example. As you
can remember, it has an ID of "email" and we have already accessed it
in the "Locating by ID" section. This time, we will use a CSS Selector
with ID in accessing that very same element.
Syntax

Description

css=tag#i
d

tag = the HTML tag of the element being accessed

# = the hash sign. This should always be present when
using a CSS Selector with ID
id = the ID of the element being accessed

Keep in mind that the ID is always preceded by a hash sign (#).

Step 1. Navigate to www.facebook.com. Using Firebug, examine the
"Email or Phone" text box.
At this point, take note that the HTML tag is "input" and its ID is
"email". So our syntax will be "css=input#email".

Step 2. Enter "css=input#email" into the Target box of Selenium IDE

and click the Find button. Selenium IDE should be able to highlight
that element.

Locating by CSS Selector - Tag and Class

Locating by CSS Selector using an HTML tag and a class name is
similar to using a tag and ID, but in this case, a dot (.) is used instead
of a hash sign.
Syntax

Description

css=tag.clas
s

tag = the HTML tag of the element being accessed

. = the dot sign. This should always be present when

using a CSS Selector with class

class = the class of the element being accessed

Step 1. Navigate to www.facebook.com and use Firebug to inspect the

"Email or Phone" text box. Notice that its HTML tag is "input" and its
class is "inputtext".

Step 2. In Selenium IDE, enter "css=input.inputtext" in the Target box

and click Find. Selenium IDE should be able to recognize the Email or
Phone text box.

Take note that when multiple elements have the same HTML
tag and name, only the first element in source code will be
recognized. Using Firebug, inspect the Password text box in Facebook
and notice that it has the same name as the Email or Phone text box.

The reason why only the Email or Phone text box was highlighted in
the previous illustration is that it comes first in Facebook's page
source.

Locating by CSS Selector - Tag and

Attribute
This strategy uses the HTML tag and a specific attribute of the element
to be accessed.

Syntax

css=tag[attribute=value
]

Description

tag = the HTML tag of the element being

accessed
[ and ] = square brackets within which a

specific attribute and its corresponding value will

be placed
attribute = the attribute to be used. It is

advisable to use an attribute that is unique to

the element such as a name or ID.
value = the corresponding value of the
chosen attribute.

Step 1. Navigate to Mercury Tours' Registration page

(http://newtours.demoaut.com/mercuryregister.php) and inspect the
"Last Name" text box. Take note of its HTML tag ("input" in this case)
and its name ("lastName").

Step 2. In Selenium IDE, enter "css=input[name=lastName]" in the

Target box and click Find. Selenium IDE should be able to access the
Last Name box successfully.

When multiple elements have the same HTML tag and attribute,
only the first one will be recognized. This behavior is similar to
locating elements using CSS selectors with the same tag and class.

Locating by CSS Selector - tag, class, and

attribute
Syntax

Description

css=tag.class[attribute=value]

tag = the HTML tag of the element

being accessed
. = the dot sign. This should always be

present when using a CSS Selector with

class
class = the class of the element being

accessed
[ and ] = square brackets within which

a specific attribute and its corresponding

value will be placed
attribute = the attribute to be used. It

is advisable to use an attribute that is

unique to the element such as a name or
ID.
value = the corresponding value of the

chosen attribute.

Step 1. Navigate to www.facebook.com and use Firebug to inspect the

'Email or Phone' and 'Password' input boxes. Take note of their HTML
tag, class, and attributes. For this example, we will select their
'tabindex' attributes.

Step 2. We will access the 'Email or Phone' text box first, thus, we
will use a tabindex value of 1. Enter "css=input.inputtext[tabindex=1]"
in Selenium IDE's Target box and click Find. The 'Email or Phone' input
box should be highlighted.

Step 3. To access the Password input box, simply replace the value of
the tabindex attribute. Enter "css=input.inputtext[tabindex=2]" in the

Target box and click on the Find button. Selenium IDE must be able to
identify the Password text box successfully.

Locating by CSS Selector - inner text

As you may have noticed, HTML labels are seldom given id, name, or
class attributes. So, how do we access them? The answer is through
the use of their inner texts. Inner texts are the actual string
patterns that the HTML label shows on the page.
Syntax
css=tag:contains("inner text")

Description

tag = the HTML tag of the element being

accessed
inner text = the inner text of the element

Step 1. Navigate to Mercury Tours' homepage

(http://newtours.demoaut.com/) and use Firebug to investigate the
"Password" label. Take note of its HTML tag (which is "font" in this
case) and notice that it has no class, id, or name attributes.

Step 2. Type css=font:contains("Password:") into Selenium IDE's

Target box and click Find. Selenium IDE should be able to access the
Password label as shown on the image below.

Step 3. This time, replace the inner text with "Boston" so that your
Target will now become "css=font:contains("Boston")". Click Find. You
should notice that the "Boston to San Francisco" label becomes
highlighted. This shows you that Selenium IDE can access a long label
even if you just indicated the first word of its inner text.

Locating by XPath
XPath is the language used when locating XML (Extensible Markup
Language) nodes. Since HTML can be thought of as an implementation
of XML, we can also use XPath in locating HTML elements.
Advantage: It can access almost any element, even those
without class, name, or id attributes.
Disadvantage: It is the most complicated method of
identifying elements because of too many different rules and
considerations.
Fortunately, Firebug can automatically generate XPath locators. In the
following example, we will access an image that cannot possibly be
accessed through the methods we discussed earlier.
Step 1. Navigate to Mercury Tours Homepage and use Firebug to
inspect the orange rectangle to the right of the yellow "Links" box.
Refer to the image below.

Step 2. Right click on the element's HTML code and then select the
"Copy XPath" option.

Step 3. In Selenium IDE, type one forward slash "/" in the Target box
then paste the XPath that we copied in the previous step. The entry
in your Target box should now begin with two forward slashes
"//".

Step 4. Click on the Find button. Selenium IDE should be able to

highlight the orange box as shown below.