8 Ways to locate an element using Selenium - Java

For testing an application you need to first locate an element.There are many ways to select an element .

• By ID. 
• By name.
• By class name.
• By tag name.
• By link text.
• By partial link text.
• By CSS.
• By XPath.

Below is a sample program with the above ways to select an element.

LocatorsDemo.java
package com.example;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;

public class LocatorsDemo {
 @Test
 public void locatorsDemo () throws InterruptedException{
  WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
  driver.get("http://www.learn-selenium.net/");
  
  // Select an element by id 
  WebElement ele1=driver.findElement(By.id("PopularPosts1"));
  System.out.println(ele1.getText().toString());
  // select an element by name
  WebElement ele2=driver.findElement(By.name("bgresponse"));
  System.out.println(ele2.getText().toString());
  // select an element by class name
  WebElement ele3=driver.findElement(By.className("FeaturedPost"));
  System.out.println(ele3.getText().toString());
  // select an element by tag name
  WebElement ele4=driver.findElement(By.tagName("body"));
  System.out.println(ele4.getText().toString());
  // select an element by link text
  WebElement ele5=driver.findElement(By.linkText("What is Selenium ?"));
  System.out.println(ele5.getText().toString());
  // select an element by partial link text
  WebElement ele6=driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("What is"));
  System.out.println(ele6.getText().toString());
  // select an element by css class name
  WebElement ele7=driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".widget-item-control"));
  System.out.println(ele7.getText().toString());
  // select an element by xpath
  WebElement ele8=driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='PopularPosts1']/div/ul/li[2]/a"));
  System.out.println(ele8.getText().toString());
  
   driver.close();
 }
 

}