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seleniumpageobjectspage-factory

Selenium Page Objects: Why should I return this?

Reading SeleniumHQ's pageobject documentation they specify examples of returning "this" from methods that do not navigate to other pages. My question is why?

I thought maybe the state of the page object could be a reason, however the page itself (the actual UI page) may change state or refresh but the page object itself would not. Page Factory with its @FindBy annotations already ensure that each WebElement will be found every time it is called, so the state of the elements doesn't seem to be relevant this case.

Solution

  • Consider their example

    public LoginPage typeUsername(String username) {
    driver.findElement(usernameLocator).sendKeys(username);
    return this;    
}

public LoginPage typePassword(String password) {
    driver.findElement(passwordLocator).sendKeys(password);
    return this;    
}

public HomePage submitLogin() {
    driver.findElement(loginButtonLocator).submit();
    return new HomePage(driver);    
}

    now assume we have create the page object create as page. If you didn't return anything your code would like

    page.typeUsername("tarun");
page.typePassword("lalwani");
HomePage newPage = page.submitLogin()

    But when you return this, it allows you to do method chaining. So I can use it like below

    HomePage newPage = page.typeUsername("tarun").typePassword("lalwani").submitLogin()

    As you can see it will save you some coding effort and much more elegant with IDE intellisense