Name Locator in Selenium: A Complete Guide (Advantages, Limitations, Syntax, Examples, and Alternatives)

 Selenium WebDriver supports many types of element locators like ID, Name, TagName, Class, XPath, and CSS Selectors to find and interact with the web element on a page. One of them is the Name locator. You can use the By.name() method to identify the element using the name attribute of the element. This guide will help you to learn how to use the Name Locator in Selenium, its advantages, limitations, and best practices.

What is Name Locator in Selenium?

It is an element locating strategy in Selenium WebDriver. It is used to find elements based on the value of their name attribute. If Selenium finds multiple elements with the same name, it will select the first matching element by default.

Syntax: WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.name("element_name"));

Find Element by ID in Selenium: A Complete Guide with Examples

Locating element is a crucial part in Selenium automation testing. There are many element locators available in Selenium, but finding an element by ID is one of the most reliable and most expert-recommended methods.

Why Use ID to Locate Elements?

There are many different element locators available in Selenium. But why should you prefer ID? Here are reasons.

• Unique Identifier: Generally, ID is unique on the page. That makes it most reliable to use it in the Selenium test scripts.
• Faster Execution: It is the quickest and fastest way to find an element from the page compared to other locators like XPath or CSS selectors.
• Improved Stability: There are fewer chances of changing ID in the future. It will reduce your maintenance effort in test scripts.
• Supported in All Browsers: Works well in all major browsers without any compatibility issues. 

Now let us see why ID is faster than other element locators.

How to write and Use XPath in Selenium (Using attributes, Axes, operators, functions)

One of the main reasons behind Selenium's popularity is that it supports multiple element locators. And one of them is XPath. XPath is one of the most powerful and flexible element locators in Selenium Webdriver. It helps you to navigate through the HTML structures of a page to locate an element using XPath.

In this guide, we will learn about what is XPath, how it works, and when to use it in Selenium test scripts. It is necessary to learn about different ways to find XPath of the element and how to write XPath syntax easily using real world examples. By the end, you will know the difference between absolute vs. relative XPath, common XPath expressions, and how to handle dynamic and nested elements like a pro.