SELENIUM FindElement and findElements in selenium WebDriver

findElement and findElements in Selenium :

findElement():

Every time when we need to perform any operation on WebElement we used findElement method .

Using findElement method we find WebElement from WebPage and perform Operations on it.

findElement method returns only first / Single WebElement.

If findElement does not found any WebElement on page then It throws a NoSuchElementException exception when it fails to find If the element.

Go through below examples of findElement and findElements in Selenium.

Syntax:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("Xpath location"));

1	driver.findElement(By.xpath("Xpath location"));

Example: Find element and Click on Home button.

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class FindElement {

      public static void main(String[] args) {

            // Open browser
            WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

            // Open Application
            driver.get("https://www.stqatools.com");

            // Click on Home button
            driver.findElement(By.id("Home")).click();
     }
}

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class FindElement {

public static void main(String[] args) {

// Open browser

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

// Open Application

driver.get("https://www.stqatools.com");

// Click on Home button

driver.findElement(By.id("Home")).click();

}

findElements():

When we want to fetch multiple WebElement then we use findElements for eg: Fetch all DropDown list records to verify record is present or not in DropDown list.

For this, the list of WebElements will be returned, we have to give the locator in such a manner that it can search for many elements and return the list of web elements through the list, we can iterate it and do our operation Are there.

If not found any WebElement on current page as per given element locator mechanism, it will return empty list.

Syntax:

List link = driver.findElements(By.xpath("Xpath location"));

1	List link = driver.findElements(By.xpath("Xpath location"));

Example: Store all records into list and get the size of all records and store into integer.

import java.util.List;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class FindElements {

      public static void main(String[] args) {

            // Open browser
            WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

            // Open application
            driver.get("https://www.stqatoolsl.com");

            // Find all elements and store into list
            List allElement=driver.findElements(By.xpath("//td"));

            // Get the size of allElements and store into integer.
            int size = allElement.size();                       

            // Print size of Elements
            System.out.println(size);
       }
}

import java.util.List;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;

import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class FindElements {

public static void main(String[] args) {

// Open browser

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

// Open application

driver.get("https://www.stqatoolsl.com");

// Find all elements and store into list

List allElement=driver.findElements(By.xpath("//td"));

// Get the size of allElements and store into integer.

int size = allElement.size();

// Print size of Elements

System.out.println(size);

}

Difference between findElement() and findElements() method:

Return type of findElement() is a WebElement (single) while Return type of findElements() is a List<WebElement> (multiple).

findElement() method will throw noSuchElementException if web element is not found in WebPage while findElement() will not throw any exception.

Both return an empty List<WebElement> if not found in WebPage.

General among findElement() and findElements() methods:

We use “Explicit wait” to handle WebElements using findElement.

Both methods use the same strategy to find web elements , just they return it in different ways.

FindElement and FindElements Command Method Selenium and Difference Between FindElement And FindElements Methods and findElement and findElements Commands and Examples