Selenium IDE Locating Strategies: Efficient Element Identification with ID

Master efficient web element location in Selenium IDE using the ID attribute. This tutorial demonstrates the simplicity and reliability of ID locators, highlighting best practices and potential pitfalls. Learn how to build robust and accurate Selenium IDE test scripts using unique IDs.

Selenium IDE Locating Strategies: Using the ID Attribute

In Selenium IDE, locators help identify web elements for automation. The id locator targets elements based on their HTML id attribute. This is a very simple and efficient locator strategy when elements have unique IDs. This is generally the fastest and most reliable method for locating elements, but it is very important to make sure that each element has a unique ID attribute. If the ID attribute of any element is not unique, then the script may not run correctly.

Using ID Locator in Selenium IDE

Let's build a simple login test to illustrate the ID locator:

  1. Open Selenium IDE: Launch your browser (Firefox is recommended for this example) and open Selenium IDE (typically from a browser extension).
  2. Open the Target URL: Add a command to open the Rediffmail login page:
    3. Opening Rediffmail Login Page
    
Command: open
Target: https://mail.rediff.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi
  3. Locate Elements using Inspect: Right-click on each element (username field, password field, submit button) and choose "Inspect" (or "Inspect Element") in your browser's developer tools to find the HTML for the element and its `id` attribute.
  4. Add Commands: Add Selenium commands to interact with the elements, using the id attribute as the target:
    5. Selenium IDE Commands with ID Locator
    
Command: click
Target: id=login1  //Assuming 'login1' is the id of the username field

Command: type
Target: id=login1
Value: your_username

Command: click
Target: id=password //Assuming 'password' is the id of the password field

Command: type
Target: id=password
Value: your_password

Command: click
Target: name=proceed //Assuming 'proceed' is the name of the submit button
  5. Run the Test: Click "Run" to execute the test.

Important Considerations When Using ID Locators

  • Uniqueness: Each element should have a unique id attribute. If multiple elements share the same ID, Selenium might interact with the wrong one, leading to test failures.
  • Maintainability: If the ID attribute of an element on the webpage changes, your tests will break. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the IDs are stable across different versions of the web application.
  • Availability: Not all elements on a webpage have IDs. If an element does not have a unique ID, you'll have to use a different locator strategy.