FindElement and FindElements in Selenium WebDriver.

WebElement Interface Hierarchy: 

Before going into depth, how to find the element in selenium. First, we will have a look at the basic architecture of the WebElement interface. It extends SearchContext and TakesScreenShot interfaces. It has many useful abstract methods like click, sendKeys, isSelected(), etc. Given below is a basic architecture of WebElement interface.

Find Element, or Elements command is used to interact with the web elements. If you want to find a single element, then you will have to use Find Element command, but for more than one element Find Elements command is used.

There are multiple ways to uniquely identify a web element within the web page such as ID, Name, Class Name, CSSSelector, Link Text, Partial Link Text, Tag Name, and XPath, etc.

FindElement Command Syntax: 

Find Element command takes an object "By" as a parameter and returns an object of type WebElement.By object can be used with various locators like ID, Name, Link Text, Class Name, Tag Name, Xpath, and CSSSelector. Find Element method returns a single WebElement. Suppose we wanted to find an element by the "id" attribute, the command will be written as given below

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("id_value"));

Following locators can be used in Selenium WebDriver:

• ID Name 
• Class Name 
• CSSSelector 
• Tag Name 
• Link Text 
• Partial Link Text 
• XPath 

Locator Value should be a unique value using which a web element can be identified. It is the responsibility of developers to make sure that web elements are uniquely identifiable using certain properties such as ID, Name, or Class.
Example:

WebElement loginName = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@type= 'email']"));

FindElements Command Syntax: 

Find Elements command also takes an object "By" as a parameter and returns a list of web elements. It returns an empty list if there are not elements found using the given locator type and value. Below is the command syntax of find elements

List elementName = driver.findElements(By.LocatorType("LocatorValue"));

Example:

List listOfElements = driver.findElements(By.xpath("//button[@type='button']"));

Working Example of FindElement: 

1. Go here https://accounts.google.com/
2. Find the text field to enter email
3. Enter email

package learning;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class FindElement {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  // TODO Auto-generated method stub
  
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "/home/khawer/Desktop/chromedriver");
  WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
  driver.manage().window().maximize();
  driver.manage().deleteAllCookies();
  driver.get("https://gmail.com");
  WebElement username = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@type= 'email']"));
  username.sendKeys("test@gmail.com");
  //driver.close();
 }
}

The above code will do the following things:

• Will open the specified URL
• Will locate the email field
• Will enter the email into the text field

Working Example of FindElements: 

1. Open the URL under test
2. Find all the buttons
3. Print the tag name

package learning;

import java.util.List;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class FindElements {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  // TODO Auto-generated method stub

  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "/home/khawer/Desktop/chromedriver");
  WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
  driver.manage().window().maximize();
  driver.manage().deleteAllCookies();
  driver.get("https://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/gmail/about/");
  List list = driver.findElements(By.xpath("//button[@type='button']"));
  System.out.println("Number of elements:" + list.size());
  for (int j = 0; j < list.size(); i++) {
   System.out.println("Element "+i+" Tag Name:" + list.get(i).getTagName());
  }
 }
}

Output:

Element 0 Tag Name:button
Element 1 Tag Name:button
Element 2 Tag Name:button
Element 3 Tag Name:button
Element 4 Tag Name:button
Element 5 Tag Name:button
Element 6 Tag Name:button
Element 7 Tag Name:button
Element 8 Tag Name:button

Method Detail: 

  findElements

  Find a list of web elements within the web page.

 Parameters: The object reference variable of WebElement Interface

 Returns: A list of all WebElements.

 findElement

 WebElement findElement(By by)

 Find the first web element within the web page.

 Parameters: By class, the object is passed as a parameter

 Returns: The object reference variable of WebElement Interface

 Throws: NoSuchElementException - If no matching element is not found

Conclusion: 

• Find Element command returns a single web element 
• Find Elements command returns a list of web   element 
• Find Element command throws NoSUchElementFoundException if it does not find the   matching element 
• Find the Elements command returns an empty list if there are no matching elements.