Testing / Selenium Interview questions

What are locators in Selenium?

Locators are the strategies Selenium uses to find a specific element on a page so an action or check can be performed on it, exposed through the By class.

driver.findElement(By.id("username"));
driver.findElement(By.name("email"));
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".btn-primary"));
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[text()='Submit']"));

Available strategies include id, name, className, tagName, linkText, partialLinkText, cssSelector, and xpath. Unlike Playwright's lazy locators, a Selenium WebElement returned by findElement is resolved immediately against the current DOM and does not automatically re-query later, which is why it can become stale if the page re-renders after it was found.

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Selenium locators are exposed through which class? The By class

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The Locator class

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The Finder class

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A WebElement returned by findElement is: Lazily re-queried on every action

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Resolved immediately and can become stale later

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Never usable for clicking

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