You can write an RSpec test that tries to do this by grepping spec files for the locator names. It will not be foolproof. Some orphans might slip through and the test still passes (falsely). However if the locator is not found anywhere it does indicate an orphan and it will fail the test.

This is based on:

• locators being in a locators.yml file

• locator file format is name : 'locator_string' per line

• spec file having the format *_spec.rb

• specs in subdirectories are supported (through glob)

    require 'rspec'
  
    describe 'Page Objects locator yml file' do
  
      it "uses all its locator keys" do
        locators_file = File.open('locators.yml')
        pairs = []
        keys = []
  
        locators_file.each_line do |line|
          words = line.split(': ')
          pairs << {words[0] => words[1]}
          keys << words[0]
        end
        locators_file.close
  
        files = Dir.glob("**/*_spec.rb")
        unused_keys = []
        keys.each do |key|
          @key_used = false
          files.each {|file| search_file_for_key(file, key) }
          unused_keys << key unless @key_used
        end
        unused_keys_exist = unused_keys.size > 0
        if unused_keys_exist
          p "Unused Page Object keys! Please address these orphans:"
          p unused_keys
        end
  
        expect(unused_keys_exist).to be false
  
      end
  
      def search_file_for_key(file, key)
        spec_file = File.open(file)
        file_contents = spec_file.read
        spec_file.close
        @key_used = true if file_contents.match(/#{key}/)
      end
  
    end
  

You can write an RSpec test that tries to do this by grepping spec files for the locator names. It will not be foolproof. Some orphans might slip through and the test still passes (falsely). However if the locator is not found anywhere it does indicate an orphan and it will fail the test.

This is based on:

• locators being in a locators.yml file

• locator file format is name : 'locator_string' per line

• spec file having the format *_spec.rb

• specs in subdirectories are supported (through glob)

    require 'rspec'
  
    describe 'Page Objects locator yml file' do
  
      it "uses all its locator keys" do
        locators_file = File.open('locators.yml')
        pairs = []
        keys = []
  
        locators_file.each_line do |line|
          words = line.split(': ')
          pairs << {words[0] => words[1]}
          keys << words[0]
        end
        locators_file.close
  
        files = Dir.glob("**/*_spec.rb")
        unused_keys = []
        keys.each do |key|
          @key_used = false
          files.each {|file| search_file_for_key(file, key) }
          unused_keys << key unless @key_used
        end
        unused_keys_exist = unused_keys.size > 0
        if unused_keys_exist
          p "Unused Page Object keys! Please address these orphans:"
          p unused_keys
        end
  
        expect(unused_keys_exist).not_to be, 
          lambda {"Failure - orphan page object identifiers #{unused_keys}"}    
      end
  
      def search_file_for_key(file, key)
        spec_file = File.open(file)
        file_contents = spec_file.read
        spec_file.close
        @key_used = true if file_contents.match(/#{key}/)
      end
  
    end