Selenium - Page Navigation

Summary

Here we have some code from the previous chapter.

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const { Builder, By, until } = require('selenium-webdriver');
const chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');
const path = require('path');

(async () => {

    let chromeDriverPath = path.resolve('C:/Users/AIMS TECH/Desktop/selenium-tests/chromedriver.exe');
    let service = new chrome.ServiceBuilder(chromeDriverPath);

    let options = new chrome.Options()
        .addArguments('--disable-search-engine-choice-screen')
        .addArguments('--lang=en-GB');

    let driver = await new Builder()
        .forBrowser('chrome')
        .setChromeService(service)
        .setChromeOptions(options)
        .build();
        
})();

As a quick recall, this code configures the browser with the following options and launches a new instance of it. However it doesn't go to any specific URL.

There are two different ways of navigating to a URL. The first method is by using the get method, which simply searches for the specified URL and displays the page.

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driver.get('https://www.google.com');

The other method is to use the navigate method.

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driver.navigate().to('https://www.google.com');

The navigate method provides a few more options as well. It lets us go to the previous and the next pages using next and back methods.

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// Go to the previous page
driver.navigate().back();

// Go back to the forward page
driver.navigate().forward();

Moreover, it also provides a method called refresh for refreshing the page.

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driver.navigate().refresh();

The refresh() method can be fairly useful in the context of testing.