Nightwatch: Support for pseudo selectors

[FredyC]

Starting in #696. It would be great to support pseudo selectors (eg. :nth-child(X)), especially together with page objects (eg. @element:nth-child(5)). Currently when I need to find element in the set I have switch to XPath _AND_ on top of that I've to forget about using page objects because they cannot be composed together with dynamic information from within the actual test.

[Bobu77]

Same here ! :+1:

[jesusreal]

I also would love to see this feature implemented! :+1:

[nhufinney]

Please update this feature.

[Brogust]

Has this been implemented successfully?

[Svjard]

Huge :+1:

[Ftelf]

Parametrized sections/elements is a must. What is a point of testing static xhtml structure.
:+1:

[beatfactor]

This is a duplicate of https://github.com/nightwatchjs/nightwatch/issues/697.

[FredyC]

@beatfactor Um are you sure you got correct number? You are referencing this issue...

[senocular]

@FredyC this is something I've been working on: #1116; does it seem to satisfy your needs?

[FredyC]

@senocular Well I don't have any needs as I am not using nightwatch in any of my projects right now, but I am sure many of others here will be happy about it.

[NiltiakSivad]

Just to add to the voices who really want this feature. I'm actively using Nightwatch in a large project and it is extremely painful to do something as simple as select the n-th element of an array of elements retrieved by a single selector, especially using Page Objects. This would help immensely.

[Ftelf]

@senocular I believe that the #1116 fixes only small portion of the lack of support for dynamic selectors. The idea would be great if you will also allow a user-parameters.
I would like to use a selector like this: "//*[local-name() ='tspan' and .='${var1}']"
or
"//a[.='${var1}']"

In most cases you could just write a function to build your element selector, but it is going into mess if you have half of the elements in nicely organized structure and than bunch of magic-strings in the functions. Also this will not cover a scenario when you have a dynamic element with a sub-section. In fact in that case you can call a page.model().section.level1.section.level2.expect.element(giveMeDynamic(var1, var2)).to.be....
But it will not do so if you need to have a dynamic section.
I ussually have mix of the structure of xpath and css selectors, because there is things that are supported in only one of them.

[senocular]

@Ftelf #1116 is a step in that direction. An object-based selector allows it to be parameterizable with additional data (such as index). One of the bullet points in the PR description refers to this. So something like...

  elements: {
    searchBar: { 
      selector (var1) {
        return "//*[local-name() ='tspan' and .='${var1}']";
      }
    },
    // ...

then

page.model().section.level1.section.level2.expect.element({selector:'@searchBar', var1:'foo'}).to.be...

That's the general idea, at least. I still haven't fully flushed the best way to call the function with that data.

[ghost]

@beatfactor . Please review this issue. You just closed it, and said that is the duplicate of the same issue :)
Also, I can't find any news about this issue. Is it implemented in Nightwatch.js?
This feature could be crucial for using Nightwatch page object pattern.

[lacymorrow]

Hi, would still like to see this implemented.

[beatfactor]

Ok, so @senocular's solution is available in v1.0 so you can do the equivalent of @element:nth-child(5). I will look into the possibility of supporting pseudo css selectors as well.

[lacymorrow]

@beatfactor, you've been the MAN the last few months, Nightwatch has improved tremendously the last few years since I first used it.

If we can get :before and :after CSS selectors (even if only available with XClass or etc), that would solve 90% of the pseudo-selector drama.

I know it's up to the browser webdrivers to initially add support, but once Nightwatch has it integrated you will become a testing framework candidate for a ton of people.

(For reference, now that Nightwatch is progressing as a framework, I'm adopting it into my professional environments as well as personal)

[beatfactor]

@lacymorrow Thanks for your support, although I would say that Nightwatch has been improving lately as a result of a team effort, a strong collaboration between the maintainers and contributors.

We just need to get all the main issues sorted out first and then we'll add more improvements, such as this one.

[beatfactor]

This has been added in v1.1.