Locators

Locators#

❓What Are Locators?#

Locators are representations of UI elements.

They’re what the Page files use to interact with the UI.

ArgoBEAST makes use of the built in Selenium By class to make declaring locators simple.

They are constructed as a tuple where the first argument is the type and the second is the HTML reference.

Locator Types#

Selenium makes use of 8 of the most common locator types:

  • CLASS_NAME

  • CSS_SELECTOR

  • ID

  • NAME

  • XPATH

  • LINK_TEXT

  • PARTIAL_LINK_TEXT

  • TAG_NAME

In bold are the most commonly used.

For more information on locators you can, and should, use the Selenium documentation. https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/elements/locators/

📍 Where to Put Locators#

In ArgoBEAST, locators are scoped globally at the top of your PageClass so should be capitalised and spaces separated with an underscore.

Example:

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

USER_NAME = (By.ID, "username")
PASSWORD = (By.ID, "password")

ArgoBEAST keeps locators with the Page they belong to because it makes Pages self-contained and easier to read.

🚧 Best Practices for Maintainable Locators#

  • Be wary of long XPATH locators. There is a tendency to create unreadable locators based on a raw XPATH.

This is brittle and could easily break when updates are made to the application.

  • Try to use a unique ID wherever possible.

  • You should ensure your locators are named appropriately so you can easily reference them. Some common names might be:

BURGER_MENU
USER_NAME
PASSWORD