UI Automation - Elements on my UI have ember ids , which change frequently with addition of new UI elements. How to use the id for automation?

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Example of the HTML of a dropdown element:

    <div aria-owns="ember-basic-dropdown-content-ember1234" tabindex="0" data-ebd-id="ember1234-trigger" role="button" id="ember1235" class="ember-power-select-trigger ember-basic-dropdown-trigger ember-view">  <!---->
    <span class="ember-power-select-status-icon"></span>
    </div>

The xpath and CSS selector also contain the same ember id. xpath : //*[@id="ember1235"] css selector : #ember1235

The ember id would change from id="ember1235" to say, id="ember1265" when there is a change in the UI.

I am using id to locate the element. But every time it changes I need to modify the code. Is there any other attribute I could use for Ember JS UI elements?

ember.js ui-automation selenium
1 Answers

There is quite a lot to discuss in your question but hopefully we will have a good answer for you @PriyaK

The first thing to mention is that Ember IDs may not be the best method to select an element in the DOM. As you have already mentioned, they can change from time to time and also it doesn't really give you a great semantic thing to select in your selenium test so it might seem a bit out of context when looking back.

One thing that you could try is to either pass a class to the ember-power-select component (the one that provides the HTML that you used in your example) and use that to select the element, something like: 

<PowerSelect
  @class="my-fancy-class"
  as |name|
>
  {{name}}
</PowerSelect>

Then you should be able to select the selected value by using the CSS selector .my-fancy-class span (because the component outputs the selected value in a span)

We just tried this in an example app but it didn't actually work Never fear, you can also do something like this and it should work with the same selector as before: 

<div class="my-fancy-class">
  <PowerSelect as |name|>
    {{name}}
  </PowerSelect>
</div>

This is fine, but there are also a few issues using classes for selectors in tests. One example of a problem that might crop up is that your tests might all suddenly stop working if you did a style refactor and changed or removed some of the classes on your elements. One technique that has become popular in the Ember community is to use data-test- attributes on your DOM nodes like this: 

<div data-test-my-fancy-select>
  <PowerSelect
    @class="my-fancy-class"
    as |name|
  >
    {{name}}
  </PowerSelect>
</div>

which can then be accessed by the following selector: [data-test-my-fancy-select] span. This is great for a few reasons! Firstly it separates the implementation of your application and tests from your styling and avoids the issue I described above. The second benefit of this method is that using what @Gokul suggested in the comments, the ember-test-selectors package, you can make use of these data-test- selectors in your development and test environments but they will be automatically removed from your production build. This is great to keep your DOM clean in production but also, depending on the size of your application, could save you a reasonable amount of size in your templates on aggregate.

I know you say that you are using selenium for your testing but it's also worth mentioning that if you're using the built-in Ember testing system you will be able to make use of some testing helpers that addons may provide you. ember-power-select is one of those addons that provides specific testing helpers and you can read more about it in their documentation: https://ember-power-select.com/docs/test-helpers

I hope this answers any questions you had!

This question was answered as part of "May I Ask a Question" Season 3 Episode 1. If you would like to see us discuss this answer in full you can check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DAJXUucnQU

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