ngWebDriver

A small library of WebDriver locators and more for AngularJS (v1.x) and Angular (v2 through v12), for Java. It works with Firefox, Chrome and all the other Selenium-WebDriver browsers.

Status

We have taken JavaScript directly from Angular's Protractor project. While ngWebDriver perfectly compliments the Java version of WebDriver, it has to pass JavaScript up to the browser to interoperate with AngularJS and Angular (less than v12), and the Protractor project has done the hard work (including testing) to make that solid. This project benefits from that work.

The Protractor team has stopped work now. Angular itself will incrementally drop old Protractor capability. We are not going to be able to keep nbWebDriver going on our own. Please don't email us to ask us or file bugs asking. If you can't go in the directions that the Angular team suggest, flip to plain Selenium use and live without the Angular-specific bits and pieces.

Compatibility

Like Protractor, ngWebDriver works with AngularJS versions greater than 1.0.6/1.1.4, and is compatible with Angular 2-12 applications. Note that for Angular 2-12 apps, the binding and model locators are not supported. We recommend using by.css.

Documentation

Waiting for Angular to finish async activity

ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
NgWebDriver ngWebDriver = new NgWebDriver(driver);
ngWebDriver.waitForAngularRequestsToFinish();

Do this if WebDriver can possibly run ahead of Angular's ability finish it's MVC stuff in your application. In some of the error cases (e.g. if it's not an angular application or if the root selector could not be found correctly in an angular 2 app, an error message is returned from the waitForAngularRequestsToFinish method.

Locators

repeater()

As Protractor's repeater locator this works for arbitrary ng-repeat elements, not just <tr> or <td>.

ByAngular.repeater("foo in f")
ByAngular.repeater("foo in f").row(17)
ByAngular.repeater("foo in f").row(17).column("foo.name")
ByAngular.repeater("foo in f").column("foo.name")

exactRepeater()

As Protractor's exactRepeater

ByAngular.exactRepeater("foo in foos")
ByAngular.exactRepeater("foo in foos").row(17)
ByAngular.exactRepeater("foo in foos").row(17).column("foo.name")
ByAngular.exactRepeater("foo in foos").column("foo.name")

binding()

As Protractor's binding locator

ByAngular.binding("person.name")
ByAngular.binding("{{person.name}}")
// You can also use a substring for a partial match
ByAngular.binding("person");

exactBinding()

As Protractor's exactBinding locator

ByAngular.exactBinding("person.name")
ByAngular.exactBinding("{{person.name}}")

model()

As Protractor's model locator

ByAngular.model('person.name')

options()

As Protractor's options locator

ByAngular.options("c for c in colors")

buttonText()

As Protractor's buttonText locator

ByAngular.buttonText("cLiCk mE")

partialButtonText()

As Protractor's partialButtonText locator

// If you have a button name "Click me to open", using just "click" would do if you partialButtonText
ByAngular.partialButtonText("cLiCk ")

cssContainingText()

As Protractor's cssContainingText locator

ByAngular.cssContainingText("#animals ul .pet", "dog")

Page Objects.

The work in the same way at WebDriver's page object technology, there are a set of FindBy annotations for ngWebDriver:

@ByAngularBinding.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularButtonText.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularButtonText.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularCssContainingText.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularExactBinding.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularModel.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularOptions.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularPartialButtonText.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularRepeater.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularRepeaterCell.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularRepeaterColumn.FindBy(..)
@ByAngularRepeaterRow.FindBy(..)

Declare them above fields as you would have done for FindBy in the regular WebDriver and continue to to use PageFactory.initElements(..) as normal. Refer to the parameters for the new FindBy static inner classes as there's rootSelector argument that is optional, but should have been tried before you raise a bug with ngWebDriver.

Angular model interop

As with Protractor, you can change items in an Angular model, or retrieve them regardless of whether they appear in the UI or not.

Changing model variables

NgWebDriver ngWebDriver = new NgWebDriver(driver);
// change something via the model defined in $scope
ngWebDriver.mutate(formElement, "person.name", "'Wilma'");
// Note Wilma wrapped in single-quotes as it has to be a valid JavaScript
// string literal when it arrives browser-side for execution

Getting model variables

As a JSON string:

NgWebDriver ngWebDriver = new NgWebDriver(driver);
// Get something via the model defined in $scope
String personJson = ngWebDriver.retrieveJson(formElement, "person");

As a string:

NgWebDriver ngWebDriver = new NgWebDriver(driver);
// Get something via the model defined in $scope
String personName = ngWebDriver.retrieveAsString(formElement, "person.name");

As a number:

NgWebDriver ngWebDriver = new NgWebDriver(driver);
// Get something via the model defined in $scope
Long personAge = ngWebDriver.retrieveAsLong(formElement, "person.age");

As Map/dict:

NgWebDriver ngWebDriver = new NgWebDriver(driver);
// Get something via the model defined in $scope
Map person = (Map) ngWebDriver.retrieve(formElement, "person");
// note - could be List instead of a Map - WebDriver makes a late decision on that

Helping NgWebDriver find Angular apps in a page

Getting "Cannot read property '$$testability' of undefined" ?

If you're seeing $$testability referenced in a WebDriver error, then work out in you have correctly set selector for the "root element" on the Angular app. Specifically have you used .withRootSelector(..) in situations where you need to use it? Details about how to recover from that here...

To specify a different "root selector" to help ngWebDriver find the Angular app, take a look at what is defined in the ng-app attribute in the page in question. Examples:

NgWebDriver ngwd = new NgWebDriver(webDriver).withRootSelector("something-custom");
ByAngular.Factory baf = ngwd.makeByAngularFactory()
WebElement element = webDriver.findElement(baf.exactRepeater("day in days"));
element.click();

// locators
ByAngular.withRootSelector("something-custom").exactRepeater("day in days");

// or
ByAngular.Factory baf = ByAngular.withRootSelector("something-custom");
ByAngularRepeater foo = baf.exactRepeater("day in days");

Alternate root selectors

Referring to a handy StackOverflow questions - No injector found for element argument to getTestability, you can use the applicable selector for your Angular app:

.withRootSelector("[ng-app]")- matching an element that has the arribute ng-app (this is the default)
.withRootSelector("\"app-root\"")- matching an element that has the element name app-root
.withRootSelector("#my-app") - matching an id my-app
.withRootSelector("[fooBar]") - matching an attribute fooBar on any element
.withRootSelector("[module=todoApp]") - the "todo app" module (amongst others) on the https://angularjs.org home page.

There's a reference to css selectors you'll need to read - https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_selectors.asp - because that's the type of string it is going to require.

Still needing help on $$testability ?

Read the five or so bug reports on $$testability and how (most likely) you have to learn a little about you application so that you can use .withRootSelector("\"abc123\""). Those bug reports: https://github.com/paul-hammant/ngWebDriver/issues?issue+testability. Also deeply read the css_selectors page on w3schools.com (link above) so you can fine tune your selector fu before filing a bug against this project.

Other Functions

getLocationAbsUrl()

Returns the URL of the page.

String absoluteUrl = new NgWebDriver(driver).getLocationAbsUrl();

Code Examples

All our usage examples are in a single test class:

Including it in your project

Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.paulhammant</groupId>
  <artifactId>ngwebdriver</artifactId>
  <version>1.1.5</version>
  <!-- You might want to delete the following line if you get "package com.paulhammant.ngwebdriver does not exist" errors -->
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

<!-- you still need to have a dependency for preferred version of
  Selenium/WebDriver. That should be 3.3.1 or above -->

Non-Maven

Download from Mavens Central Repo

Releases

Last Release: 1.1.5 - Feb 22, 2020

Refer CHANGELOG

Seeking help

take a look all of this README - it is not that long
take a look at the issues (open and closed)
read the Code of Conduct and raise an issue, but be sure to make it really really easy for committers to reproduce your error. Like a clone and a build and - bang - perfect reproduction.
if there's some reason you can't do the reproduction on GitHub contact Paul Hammant - paul@hammant.org - for custom support.

paul-hammant / ngWebDriver

readme