Selenium with Java

Introduction

This guide introduces the core features of Selenium with Java.

Some code examples are wrapped to fit the page. If a line is long, scroll horizontally to see the rest.

Add Selenium to an IntelliJ IDEA project

Go to www.selenium.dev/downloads/

Find Java in the list of available languages and click Download

Extract the archive. Its contents should look similar to this.

Open your project in IntelliJ IDEA and select File → Project Structure.

Select Modules, click the plus sign on the right, and choose 1. JARs or directories….

Open the folder where you extracted Selenium and select all .jar files in the root and in the libs subfolder.

Click OK.

Continue to the next section.

Set up a browser driver

Browser-driver setup is broadly the same whichever programming language you use.

See the guide «Set up a Selenium browser driver»

A simple test

To verify that Selenium is set up, paste the following code into your project and compile it.

Remember to add the driver directory to the system PATH See the Selenium basics guide for instructions. Selenium basics

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); } }

If you cannot edit PATH, set the driver location explicitly before creating the WebDriver:

System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "C:/webdrivers/geckodriver.exe");

Find elements

For an overview of locator strategies, see «Selenium basics»

First import By, which provides Java's locator strategies:

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

Finding an element is often only the first step. Import WebElement to interact with the element you found.

import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;

Element locator examples

This short example demonstrates several ways to locate elements.

Open the Selenium practice form

The test will:

1. Fill in the “Website” field and click “Visit”.

2. Click the first link whose text is “Renovation”.

3. Click the second element whose text is “Italy”.

4. Click the second image.

Each task uses a different locator strategy.

Start with an ID locator. The practice page contains this input:

<input type="text" id="name1" name="url1">

So the ID to locate is name1.

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.Keys; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver; public class webDriverDemo1 { public class main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(); // 1. Locate by ID driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); WebElement searchField = driver.findElement(By.id("name1")); searchField.sendKeys("topbicycle.ru"); searchField.submit();

Use linkText to find links labelled Renovation, select the first match, and click it.

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.Keys; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver; public class webDriverDemo1 { public class main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(); // 2. Locate by link text driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); WebElement renovationLink = driver.findElements(By.linkText("Renovation")).get(0); renovationLink.click();

Next, use a CSS selector to find an a element with the march8 class.

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.Keys; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver; public class webDriverDemo1 { public class main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(); // 3. Locate by CSS selector driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); WebElement march8Link = driver.findElements(By.cssSelector("a[class=march8]")).get(0); march8Link.click();

Finally, locate an image by its tag name.

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.Keys; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver; public class webDriverDemo1 { public class main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(); // 4. Locate by tag name driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); WebElement imageLink = driver.findElements(By.tagName("img")).get(1); imageLink.click(); } }

Radio buttons

On the Selenium practice form find a radio button and select Lannister.

Print the selected value to verify the result.

This example stores the radio buttons in a list, so it imports import java.util.List;

The example uses Firefox

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import java.util.List; public class WebDriverRadioButtons { public static void main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); List<WebElement> radioButtons = driver.findElements(By.name("house")); radioButtons.get(1).click(); for (WebElement radioButton : radioButtons) { if (radioButton.isSelected()) { System.out.println(radioButton.getAttribute("value")); } } } }

Checkboxes

On the Selenium practice form find the checkboxes and select Cersei.

The input has an ID in the page source, so it can be located directly.

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; public class WebDriverCheckboxes { public static void main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); WebElement checkbox = driver.findElement(By.id("cerseiId")); checkbox.click(); } }

Drop-down lists

On the Selenium practice form find the drop-down list and select Dawn.

This example uses Select, so import import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.Select;

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.Select; public class WebDriverSelectItems { public static void main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); WebElement selectElement = driver.findElement(By.id("swords")); Select select = new Select(selectElement); select.selectByVisibleText("Dawn"); } }

Tables

On the Selenium practice form locate a table. The outer table contains a nested table; find a cell in the nested table's third row and print its text.

Notice lines 14–16: the driver first locates the outer table, then each search is scoped to the table found in the previous step.

import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; public class WebDriverTables { public static void main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); driver.get("https://aredel.com/qa/selenium/basic_test/"); WebElement outerTable = driver.findElement(By.tagName("table")); WebElement innerTable = outerTable.findElement(By.tagName("table")); WebElement row = innerTable.findElements(By.tagName("td")).get(2); System.out.println(row.getText()); } }

Wait for an element

Elements can load at different speeds. Use Selenium's wait conditions instead of relying on arbitrary delays.

This example opens the site's search page, waits for the search field, enters python, then waits for and clicks the search button.

import java.time.Duration; import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.WebDriverWait; import static org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated; public class WebDriverExplicitWait { public static void main(String[] args) { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); // explicit wait WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(50)); driver.get("http://www.eth1.ru/search.php"); try { WebElement yandexField = wait.until(presenceOfElementLocated(By.name("text"))); yandexField.sendKeys("python"); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } try { WebElement yButton = wait.until(presenceOfElementLocated(By.className("ya-site-form__submit"))); yButton.click(); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }

Implicit wait

An implicit wait is a global WebDriver setting. When locating an element, WebDriver keeps checking until it finds the element or the timeout expires.

The driver polls the page DOM while waiting for the element.

Explicit wait

An explicit wait pauses only until a particular condition is met, such as an element becoming visible or clickable. It is usually a better fit when different page elements load at different times.