What is a dynamic element on the web page?

dynamic element is an element which has 'dynamic attributes' and/or 'dynamic location' on the web page.

How to locate the dynamic elements on the web page?

 We can locate dynamic elements using:

(a) Absolute XPath

(b) Relative XPath using Functions and Axes

(c) CSS (refer: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Selectors)

XPath Facts

1. XPath stands for XML Path Language

2. powerful way of navigating through the DOM of any XML-like language document using XPathExpression, such as HTML 

3. XPath uses a path notation (as in URLs) for navigating through the hierarchical structure of an XML document.

When would we use XPath locator in Selenium?

• When locating the element through name or id is not possible.

  • the element does not have id attribute of name attribute

  • The id, name attribute of the element changes dynamically

• if possible use By.id or By.name as less faster and more readable code

How to locate the dynamic elements using XPath?

• XPath functions like starts-with(), text(), contains()

• XPath Axes -  An axis represents a relationship to the context node, and is used to locate nodes relative to that node on the tree. example:

  
  

• Examples of XPath axes are : parent, child, ancestor, self, following-sibling, descendant-or-self

XPath: absolute XPath and relative XPath

• Absolute XPath - Absolute XPath begins from the root element "/" and traverses through the DOM tree until it reaches the desired element. 

• ​

• disadvantage : if Note that if the DOM tree structure above the desired element changes in future, the absolute path will not work. 

• ​

• Relative XPath starts with double slash '//' and indicates path relative to any element in the DOM indicated by the XPath expression.

//a[starts-with(@href, "https://play.google.com/")]

• any or all anchor elements that have 'href' attribute with value that starts with the text in quotes

• @ precedes attribute name to indicate attribute

• //a refers to all HTML anchor tags in the page

• the [