Locators for selenium | className locator example | gmail login automation example in java-selenium

Hi,

In this post, you will see demonstration of "className" locator usage. 

"classname" is one of the 8 locators supported by selenium, using it one can navigate to target page by performing click action(s).

For instance, Login to gmail  @ https://mail.google.com/
Let's see how to identify the name locators of login elements for gmail web application.

Email or Phone input text input HTML with "name" locator 

<input type="email" class="whsOnd zHQkBf" jsname="YPqjbf" autocomplete="username" spellcheck="false" tabindex="0" aria-label="Email or phone" name="identifier" value="" autocapitalize="none" id="identifierId" dir="ltr" data-initial-dir="ltr" data-initial-value="" badinput="false" aria-invalid="false" xpath="1">

selenium identifies the above input element(Email or Phone) using "className" locator with the following java statement. 

driver.findElement(By.className("whsOnd")).sendKeys("java.selenium2021@gmail.com");

Tap on the image to get better visibility: 

To avoid StaleElementReferenceException for other elements locators having the same class name ,  I am taking xpaths to find them, for instance , password has the same className i.e., class="whsOnd zHQkBf"  so instead of having className for password taking xpath //input[@name='password']

classNameLocatorDemo.java

package selenium.locators.examples;

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.Keys;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class classNameLocatorDemo {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  
  WebDriver driver;
  
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "D:\\006_trainings\\chromedriver.exe");
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.silentOutput","true" );
  
  driver = new ChromeDriver();
  
  driver.navigate().to("https://mail.google.com/");
  driver.manage().window().maximize();
  
  //finding "Email or Phone" input text by clasName locator and enter value
  driver.findElement(By.className("whsOnd")).sendKeys("java.selenium2021@gmail.com");
  
  // click on "Next" button - This is an xpath example that will be covered in later sessions
  driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[@class='RveJvd snByac']")).click();
    
  driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
  
  // locate "Enter your password" text input with xpath locator and enter password say --> JavaSelenium2021
  // If we take className for this input we will end up with 
  // Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: 
  // stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document
  
  WebElement elePassword=driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@name='password']"));
  elePassword.sendKeys("JavaSelenium2021");
  
  elePassword.sendKeys(Keys.TAB); 
  elePassword.sendKeys(Keys.TAB); 
   
  // click on "Next" button - This is again an xpath example. 
  driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[contains(text(),'Next')]")).click();
  
  //close the driver
  //driver.close();
 }
}