Bot Style Tests

Although PageObjects are a useful way of reducing duplication in your tests, it's not always a pattern that teams feel comfortable following. An alternative approach is to follow a more "command-like" style of testing.

Example

A "bot" is an action-oriented abstraction over the raw Selenium APIs. This means that if you find that commands aren't doing the Right Thing for your app, it's easy to change them. As an example:

public class ActionBot {
  private final WebDriver driver;

  public ActionBot(WebDriver driver) {
    this.driver = driver;
  }

  public void click(By locator) {
    driver.findElement(locator).click();
  }

  public void submit(By locator) {
    driver.findElement(locator).submit();
  }

  /** 
   * Type something into an input field. WebDriver doesn't normally clear these
   * before typing, so this method does that first. It also sends a return key
   * to move the focus out of the element.
   */
  public void type(By locator, String text) { 
    WebElement element = driver.findElement(locator);
    element.clear();
    element.sendKeys(text + "\n");
  }
}

Once these abstractions have been built and duplication in your tests identified, it's possible to layer PageObjects on top of bots.