New Feature in Selenium 4 – Easy way to open new Tabs and Windows
Welcome to 6th article in Selenium4 new features series.
What you will Learn:
New Feature in Selenium 4 – Easy way to open new Tabs
New Feature in Selenium 4 – Easy way to open new Windows
Code snippets
New Feature in Selenium 4 – Easy way to open new Tabs
In Selenium4, there is now an easy way to open new tabs and new windows. To quickly understand the difference between tab and window, let us launch https://www.way2automation.com/
Click any of the 4 icons that you see on top right hand side (facebook, linkedin, youtube, etc..). Notice below that new tab opens up
Ctrl+N opens a new browser window as shown below
Let us now see how easy it is to open a new tab using selenium4.
Below are the steps of the use case that we would automate:
Launch https://www.selenium-tutorial.com/courses
Store id of original window
Print id of original window
Create a new tab and switch to new tab
Store id of new tab
Print id of new tab
Execute the script, a blank new tab should open
The below piece of code would execute the above steps. See line number 21 below. Selenium4 has a method switchTo().newWindow(WindowType.TAB) to provide an easy way to create a blank new tab and simultaneously switch to new tab as well
Rest of the steps are self-explanatory.
Run the script, notice below that a blank new tab opens
Below is the console output showing the 2 IDs that are different:
Let us now extend our above use case by automating the below steps:
On the new tab, navigate to a different url https://www.way2automation.com/
Print title of tab window
Execute the script
Below code will do the needful
Notice below that new tab now launches the new url
The console shows the page title
Next, let us continue automating below steps:
Close the new tab
Without switching to original window, let us try to print title of original window
Below code will perform above 2 additional steps:
Let us run the script. Notice that the new tab closes but we get NoSuchWindowException (see console o/p below). The reason we get this exception is because, selenium is still pointing to new tab. We have to tell selenium to switch to original window
Let us add the below step
Lets run the script now. Notice that there is no exception now and selenium prints the title of original window
So this is how we can open a new tab in selenium4 and switch back to other tabs.
New Feature in Selenium 4 – Easy way to open new Windows
To open a new window, we can use WindowType.WINDOW as shown below:
driver.switchTo().newWindow(WindowType.WINDOW);
Rest of the steps would be same.
If we execute the script, notice below that a new window opens and the console prints the respective outputs
Code snippet (new tab)
package sel4scripts;
import java.io.IOException;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WindowType;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;
public class DemoNewTabs {
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException, IOException {
WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.get("https://www.selenium-tutorial.com/courses");
//store id of original tab/window
String originalWindow = driver.getWindowHandle();
//print id of original tab/window
System.out.println("Id of original tab: " + originalWindow);
//does 2 things: creates new tab & switches to new tab
driver.switchTo().newWindow(WindowType.TAB);
//store id of new tab
String newWindow = driver.getWindowHandle();
//print id of new tab
System.out.println("Id of new tab: " + newWindow);
//on the new tab, navigate to a different url
driver.get("https://way2automation.com/");
//print title of new tab
System.out.println("Title of new tab: " + driver.getTitle());
Thread.sleep(2000);
//close the new tab
driver.close();
//Switch to default tab
driver.switchTo().window(originalWindow);
//print title of original window
System.out.println("Title of original tab: " + driver.getTitle());
}
}
Code snippet (new window)
package sel4scripts;
import java.io.IOException;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WindowType;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;
public class DemoNewWindow {
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException, IOException {
WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.get("https://www.selenium-tutorial.com/courses");
//store id of original window
String originalWindow = driver.getWindowHandle();
//print id of original window
System.out.println("Id of original window: " + originalWindow);
//does 2 things: creates new window & switches to new window
driver.switchTo().newWindow(WindowType.WINDOW);
//store id of new window
String newWindow = driver.getWindowHandle();
//print id of new window
System.out.println("Id of new window: " + newWindow);
//on the new window, navigate to a different url
driver.get("https://way2automation.com/");
//print title of new window
System.out.println("Title of new window: " + driver.getTitle());
Thread.sleep(2000);
//close the new window
//driver.close();
//Switch to original window
driver.switchTo().window(originalWindow);
//print title of original window
System.out.println("Title of original window: " + driver.getTitle());
}
}
Thank you for reading!
