xpath - How to find unique selectors for elements on pages with ExtJS for use with Selenium?

Question

I am using Selenium with Firefox Webdriver to work with elements on a page that has unique CSS IDs (on every page load) but the IDs change every time so I am unable to use them to locate an element. This is because the page is a web application built with ExtJS.

I am trying to use Firebug to get the element information.

I need to find a unique xPath or selector so I can select each element individually with Selenium.

When I use Firebug to copy the xPath I get a value like this:

//*[@id="ext-gen1302"]

However, the next time the page is loaded it looks like this:

//*[@id="ext-gen1595"]

On that page every element has this ID format, so the CSS ID can not be used to find the element.

I want to get the xPath that is in terms of its position in the DOM, but Firebug will only return the ID xPath since it is unique for that instance of the page.

/html/body/div[4]/div[3]/div[4]/div/div/div/span[2]/span

How can I get Firebug (or another tool that would work with similar speed) to give me a unique selector that can be used to find the element with Selenium even after the ext-gen ID changes?

Answer 1

Another victim of ExtJS UI automation testing, here are my tips specifically for testing ExtJS. (However, this won't answer the question described in your title)

Tip 1: Don't ever use unreadable XPath like /div[4]/div[3]/div[4]/div/div/div/span[2]/span. One tiny change of source code may lead to DOM structure change. This will cause huge maintenance costs.

Tip 2: Take advantage of meaningful auto-generated partial ids and class names.

For example, this ExtJS grid example: By.cssSelector(".x-grid-view .x-grid-table") would be handy. If there are multiple of grids, try index them or locate the identifiable ancestor, like By.cssSelector("#something-meaningful .x-grid-view .x-grid-table").

Tip 3: Create meaningful class names in the source code. ExtJS provides cls and tdCls for custom class names, so you can add cls:'testing-btn-cancel' in your source code, and get it by By.cssSelector(".testing-btn-cancel").

Tip3 is the best and the final one. If you don't have access the source code, talk to your manager, Selenium UI automation should really be a developer job for someone who can modify the source code, rather than a end-user-like tester.