Can external object repository be used with dynamic objects?

Question

I have heard as well as followed concept of keeping UI objects in external filed (xml or properties files in java). But there are times when I need to keep the objects with in test because I use them dynamically.

For example consider one html table with div having uniquq id. The div could have n number of links. I need to read their innertext. So I would be doing -

for(int i=0; i<=CSSCount(div[id='unique']>a);i++) {
    print(selenium.getText(css=div[id='unique']>a:nth-child(i)))

}

So I have app object available in test class it self, that is - css=div[id='unique']>li:nth-child(i) as I need to iterate through its elements. Is it possible to externalize such app objects also?

Answer 1

Apart from stuartf's comment, I would suggest an approach where when you want to implement things like "as I need to iterate through its elements" to implement them on a generic method and not inside the Test class so as to reuse it (and then it is dynamic).

Answer 2

What you want to do here is change the approach to finding the object, rather than finding the object by id add a consistent class attribute to the each of the divs that you are interested in and find by class rather than the id attribute.

for(int i=0; i<=CSSCount(div[class='row']>a);i++) {
    print(selenium.getText(css=div[class='row']>a:nth-child(i)))
}

Then you can place the 'row' attribute or whatever you decide to call it in a external resource file.

Hope this helps!