Page Object Model in Selenium C#

Why use Page Object Model in Selenium C#?

Selenium test automation scripts become more complex as the web applications add more features and web pages. With every new page added, new test scenarios are included in the Selenium test automation scripts. With this increase in LOC (Lines of Code), code maintenance can. Become very tedious and time-consuming. Also, the Repetitive use of web locators and their respective test methods can make the test code difficult to read.

Instead of spending time updating the same set of locators in multiple Selenium test automation scripts, a design pattern such as the Page Object Model can be used for the development and maintenance of code.

In this Selenium C# tutorial, I’d implement Page Object Model is a widely used design pattern in Selenium that:

·         Minimizes the usage of duplicated code.

·         Makes the code more readable & maintainable as there is immense focus on aspects such as reusability, extensibility, etc.

What is Page Object Model (POM) In Selenium C#?

Page Object Model in Selenium C# is a design pattern that is extensively used by the Selenium community for automation tests. The basic design principle that the Page Object Model in Selenium C# follows is that a central object repository should be created for controls on a web page. Hence, each web page will be represented by a separate class.

The Page Objects (or page classes) contains the elements of the corresponding web page along with necessary methods to access the elements on the page. Hence, Selenium test automation implementation that uses the Page Object Model in Selenium C# will constitute different classes for each web page thereby making code maintenance easier.

For example, if automation for a login page & check-out page is to be performed, our implementation will have a class each for login & check-out. The controls for the login page are in the ‘login page’ class and controls for the check-out page are in the ‘check out page’ class.

The Selenium test automation scripts do not interact directly with web elements on the page, instead, a new layer (i.e. page class/page object) resides between the test code and UI on the web page.

In complex Selenium test automation scenarios, Selenium test automation scripts based on Page Object Model can have several page classes (or page objects). It is recommended that you follow a common nomenclature while coming up with file names (representing page objects) as well as the methods used in the corresponding classes.

Advantages of Page Object Model in Selenium C#

Below are some of the major advantages of using the Page Object Model in Selenium C#

·         Better Maintenance – With separate page objects (or page classes) for different web pages, functionality or web locator changes will have a less impact on the change in test scripts. This makes the code cleaner and more maintainable as Selenium test automation implementation is spread across separate page classes.

·         Minimal Changes Due To UI Updates – The effect of changes in the web locators will only be limited to the page classes, created for automated browser testing of those web pages. This reduces the overall effort spent in changing test scripts due to frequent UI updates.

·         Reusability – The page object methods defined in different page classes can be reused across Selenium test automation scripts. This, in turn, results in a reduction of code size as there is the increased usage of reusability with Page Object Model in Selenium C#.

Apart from these advantages of Page Object Model in Selenium C#, another plus point of using this design pattern I’d like to point out in this Selenium C# tutorial is that it simplifies the visualization of the functionality and model of the web page as both these entities are located in separate page classes.

 

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What is Page Factory?

Page Factory, an extension to Page Objects, is primarily used for initialization of the web elements defined in the page classes (or page objects). Web elements used with Page Objects have to be initialized before they can be used further and Page Factory simplifies the initialization with the initElements method.

Shown below are some of the ways in which initElements function can be used:

Method 1

 

Method 2

 

Method 3

 

Using @FindsBy annotation, every WebElement variable is initialized by the Page Factory based on the locators configured to locate the element on the web page

The @FindsBy annotation can accept XPath, Id, Name, CssSelector, ClassName, LinkText, PartialLinkText, etc. as attributes

Each time a method is called on the WebElement variable, e.g. elem_search_text in the code snippet above for this Selenium C# tutorial, the Selenium WebDriver will find the element on the current web page before simulating the UI interaction.

The @CacheLookup annotation is used to cache the looked up field that was earlier read using the @FindsBy annotation. This annotation is very useful in scenarios where we know that the elements on the webpage can always be found, and we won’t be spending much time on that particular webpage, i.e. we would eventually navigate to a new page.

The @FindsBy annotation supports many other strategies; however, most of these strategies are not relevant in the context of cross browser testing or automated browser testing. More details about Page Factory are available on the official page of Page Factory.

 

How to Implement Page Object Model in Selenium C#

For Selenium test automation script development, we use the Visual Studio IDE (Community Edition) which can be downloaded from here. In case you want to know more about setting up selenium in visual studio, you can refer to our previous article on the topic.

 

Page Object Model – Directory Structure

Though the choice of the directory structure purely depends on the test requirements, it is important that a uniform structure is followed so that there are no ambiguities in development & enhancements.

We use the directory structure shown below for demonstrating the usage of the Page Object Model with C# and Selenium.

As shown in the structure above, the directory Project-Directory\Src\PageObject\Pages contains the Page Classes/Page Objects for the different web pages. The directory Project-Directory\Test\Scripts contains the actual test code implementation. The file(s) present in this directory will use the C# test framework (NUnit/xUnit/MSTest) for automated browser testing.