java - Selenium Page Object Reuse

Question

I really like how selenium 2 by convention pushes you towards using PageObjects as POJOs, and then simply using the PageFactory to instantiate the fields in this class.

What I am finding limiting is that we reuse a lot of elements on many different pages. The big problem is that these reused components do not have the same id / name when they appear on different pages; however the tests we would run for each of them is the same.

As an example we collect dates in many places. So an example page object for this could be (month, day fields removed):

public class DatePageObject {
    private WebDriver driver;

    DatePageObject(WebDriver driver) {
        this.driver = driver;
    }

    @FindBy( id = "someIdForThisInstance")
    private WebElement year;

    public void testYearNumeric() {
        this.year.sendKeys('aa');
        this.year.submit();
        //Logic to determine Error message shows up
    }
}

Then I could simply test this with the code below:

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
         WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
         DatePageObject dpo = PageFactory.initElements(driver, DriverPageObject.class);
         driver.get("Some URL");
         dpo.testYearNumeric();
    }
}

What I'd really like to do is have a setup whereby with Spring I can inject that id/name/xpath, etc... into the application.

Is there a way I can do this, without losing the ability to utilize the PageFactory?

Edit 1 -- Adding ideal base level classes, working on Custom Locators and Factories.

public class PageElement {
    private WebElement element;
    private How how;
    private String using;

    PageElement(How how, String using) {
        this.how = how;
        this.using = using;
    }
    //Getters and Setters
}


public class PageWidget {
    private List<PageElement> widgetElements;
}


public class Screen {
    private List<PageWidget> fullPage;
    private WebDriver driver;

    public Screen(WebDriver driver) {
        this.driver = driver;
        for (PageWidget pw : fullPage) {
            CustomPageFactory.initElements(driver, pw.class);
        }
}

Edit 2 -- Just as a note, as long as you are running Selenium 2.0.a5 or greater, you can now give the driver an implicit timeout value.

So you can replace your code with:

private class CustomElementLocator implements ElementLocator {
    private WebDriver driver;
    private int timeOutInSeconds;
    private final By by;


    public CustomElementLocator(WebDriver driver, Field field,
            int timeOutInSeconds) {
        this.driver = driver;
        this.timeOutInSeconds = timeOutInSeconds;
        CustomAnnotations annotations = new CustomAnnotations(field);
        this.by = annotations.buildBy();
        driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(15, TimeUnit.SECONDS); //Set this value in a more realistic place
    }


    public WebElement findElement() {
        return driver.findElement(by);
    }
}

Answer 1

You can build your Page Object of the Common Web Elements (just invented this name :)) - each CWE will represent a "widget" that is used on different pages. In your example this will be a some sort of Date Widget - it contains the Year, Month and a Day. Basically it will be a Page Object.

PageFactory requires the string constants to be used in @FindBy annotations.

To resolve this limitation we created our own ElementLocators.

You can use the DateWidget in your test:

....
DateWidget widget = new DateWidget(driver, "yearId", "monthId", "dayId");
....

public void testYearNumeric() {
        widget.setYear("aa");
        widget.submit();
        //Logic to determine Error message shows up

        // ... and day
        widget.setDay("bb");
        widget.submit();
        //Logic to determine Error message shows up
    }

The DateWidget class, which contains custom locators and annotation parsers is:

package pagefactory.test;

import java.lang.reflect.Field;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.FindBy;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.PageFactory;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.pagefactory.Annotations;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.pagefactory.ElementLocator;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.pagefactory.ElementLocatorFactory;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedCondition;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.Wait;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.WebDriverWait;

public class DateWidget {

    // These constants are used to identify that they should be changed to the actual IDs
    private static final String YEAR_ID = "$YEAR_ID$";
    private static final String MONTH_ID = "$MONTH_ID$";
    private static final String DAY_ID = "$DAY_ID$";

    // Elements whose ids will be replaced during run-time
    /** Year element */
    @FindBy(id = YEAR_ID)
    private WebElement year;

    /** Month element */
    @FindBy(id = MONTH_ID)
    private WebElement month;

    /** day element */
    @FindBy(id = DAY_ID)
    private WebElement day;

    // The ids of the elements
    /** ID of the year element */
    private String yearId;

    /** ID of the month element */
    private String monthId;

    /** ID of the day element */
    private String dayId;

    public DateWidget(WebDriver driver, String yearId, String monthId,
            String dayId) {
        this.yearId = yearId;
        this.monthId = monthId;
        this.dayId = dayId;

        PageFactory.initElements(new CustomLocatorFactory(driver, 15), this);
    }

    public String getYear() {
        return year.getValue();
    }

    public void setYear(String year) {
        setValue(this.year, year);
    }

    public String getMonth() {
        return month.getValue();
    }

    public void setMonth(String month) {
        setValue(this.month, month);
    }

    public String getDay() {
        return day.getValue();
    }

    public void setDay(String day) {
        setValue(this.day, day);
    }

    public void submit() {
        year.submit();
    }

    private void setValue(WebElement field, String value) {
        field.clear();
        field.sendKeys(value);
    }

    private class CustomLocatorFactory implements ElementLocatorFactory {
        private final int timeOutInSeconds;
        private WebDriver driver;

        public CustomLocatorFactory(WebDriver driver, int timeOutInSeconds) {
            this.driver = driver;
            this.timeOutInSeconds = timeOutInSeconds;
        }

        public ElementLocator createLocator(Field field) {
            return new CustomElementLocator(driver, field, timeOutInSeconds);
        }
    }

    private class CustomElementLocator implements ElementLocator {
        private WebDriver driver;
        private int timeOutInSeconds;
        private final By by;

        public CustomElementLocator(WebDriver driver, Field field,
                int timeOutInSeconds) {
            this.driver = driver;
            this.timeOutInSeconds = timeOutInSeconds;
            CustomAnnotations annotations = new CustomAnnotations(field);
            this.by = annotations.buildBy();
        }

        @Override
        public WebElement findElement() {
            ExpectedCondition<Boolean> e = new ExpectedCondition<Boolean>() {
                public Boolean apply(WebDriver d) {
                    d.findElement(by);
                    return Boolean.TRUE;
                }
            };
            Wait<WebDriver> w = new WebDriverWait(driver, timeOutInSeconds);
            w.until(e);

            return driver.findElement(by);
        }
    }

    private class CustomAnnotations extends Annotations {

        public CustomAnnotations(Field field) {
            super(field);
        }

        @Override
        protected By buildByFromShortFindBy(FindBy findBy) {

            if (!"".equals(findBy.id())) {
                String id = findBy.id();
                if (id.contains(YEAR_ID)) {
                    id = id.replace(YEAR_ID, yearId);
                    return By.id(id);
                } else if (id.contains(MONTH_ID)) {
                    id = id.replace(MONTH_ID, monthId);
                    return By.id(id);
                } else if (id.contains(DAY_ID)) {
                    id = id.replace(DAY_ID, dayId);
                    return By.id(id);
                }
            }

            return super.buildByFromShortFindBy(findBy);
        }

    }

}