Locating an element by id

Question

What is the difference between the following location techniques?

1. element(by.id("id"));
2. element(by.css("#id"));
3. element(by.xpath("//*[@id='id']"));
4. browser.executeScript("return document.querySelector('#id');");
5. browser.executeScript("return document.getElementById('id');");

And, from the performance perspective, which would be the fastest way to locate an element by id?

Answer 1

Take, for example, just your element(by.id("id"));.

Looking through the selenium source, most drivers just take whatever id you give, and pass it off to the wire protocol:

public WebElement findElementById(String using) 

if (getW3CStandardComplianceLevel() == 0) {

return findElement( else 

return findElementByCssSelector(

}

As you recognize, each browser vendor implements its own wire protocol in a separate binary.

Feel free to go any into the code, to dig a deeper hole for your self.

 

For other browsers that do not support the wire protocol, for example, HtmlUnit, you just have something like:

public List findElementsById(String id) {

return findElementsByXPath("//*[@id='" + id + "']");

}

and then they parse the available DOM.

As for your performance question, anything that anyone gives you will be 1) just a feeling, or 2) pure BS! Which you can already see from the other answers and comments you are getting.

To get a real answer (supported by actual data), there are just too many variables to consider:

Wire protocol as implemented by different browser vendors, plus various optimizations in different versions.

DOM engines as implemented by different browser vendors, plus various optimizations in different versions.

JavaScript engines as implemented by different browser vendors, plus various optimizations in different versions.

Also, whatever results from you get for your web app/web page will most like not to apply to a different web app/web page, due to differences in the framework used to build that site.

The bottom line is: If you are concerned about performance testing, then Selenium is the wrong answer.

Selenium is a functional test library, optimized to provide you the simplest end-user illustration.

Performance is a distant afterthought.

If your goal is to get your tests to run faster, your time will be better spent looking at your test structure:

How frequently do you open/close the browser. This is often the most time-consuming activity in a test.

How often do you refresh your element cache, how often do you need to? Consider moving your elements to the Page Factory model, which lazy-loads all elements for you.

And of course the biggest speedup factor: running your tests in parallel on multiple machines.

But I think this is getting off-topic (some might suggest "ranty") from your initial question.