Clicking on a Xpath

Question

I have a back button on my web page which I need to click on from different places.

In one page the back buttons xpath looks like: //property-list/ion-header/ion-navbar/button

In another other page it looks like: //select-client/ion-header/ion-navbar/button.

I'm using POM - can I use one object to identify all the xpaths my button could have?

Answer 1

I am giving my answer in Java:

You can identify the common parts of the xpath and use it in your locator.

As per your above mentioned sample xpath's you can do the following :

Using only POM:

By backButtonLocator = By.xpath(".//ion-header/ion-navbar/button");

public void clickonElement(By backButtonLocator)
{
  driver.findElement(backButtonLocator).click();
}

Using PageFactory:

@FindBy(how = How.XPATH, using =".//ion-header/ion-navbar/button")
public WebElement backButton;

public void clickonElement(WebElement ele)
{
  ele.click();
}

Answer 2

If the selector of the_coder doesnt work, I would suggest to let the developers add a better way to find it. For example by adding an ID.

Alternatively you could do something like:

back() {
  Boolean found = false;
  try {
    driver.findElement("//property-list/ion-header/ion-navbar/button").click();
    found = true;
  } catch {
   // Ignore notfoundexception
  }
  try {
    driver.findElement("//select-client/ion-header/ion-navbar/button").click();
    found = true;
  } catch {
   // Ignore notfoundexception
  }
  if (found === false) throw new Exception('backButtonNotFound');
}

Just try to click both different paths, if one succeeds it is OK, else throw an exception.

Answer 3

You can use something similar to the logic Niels has suggested.

You could also do something like the following in your page object:

// find my button - first, get all button elements on the page
// then use System.Linq to find the button in the collection
// with something in its innerHtml that only the back button will have
// Everything has been declared elsewhere in the unit.
try 
{
    button = driver.findElements(By.Type, "button").Where(c -> c.InnerHtml.Contains("Back").First();
}
catch (ElementNotFoundException e)
{
    // do something to handle not finding the button
}