Selenium Web Element Locators & Selectors 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which Selenium locator strategy is generally fastest and most reliable when an element has a unique ID attribute?
- By.name()
- By.xpath()
- By.id() (Correct answer)
- By.cssSelector()
Correct answer: By.id()
By.id() directly maps to the HTML 'id' attribute and is the most performant locator when IDs are unique and stable.
Question 2: What does driver.findElements() return when no elements match the given locator?
- null
- Throws NoSuchElementException
- An empty List<WebElement> (Correct answer)
- A WebElement with no properties
Correct answer: An empty List<WebElement>
findElements() always returns a List<WebElement> — an empty list when nothing matches, never null or an exception.
Question 3: Which Selenium locator strategy finds an anchor element by its complete visible text?
- By.tagName("a")
- By.partialLinkText()
- By.linkText() (Correct answer)
- By.name()
Correct answer: By.linkText()
By.linkText() matches the full visible text of an anchor (<a>) element exactly.
Question 4: What is the correct Selenium syntax to locate an element by its CSS class name?
- driver.findElement(By.id("myClass"))
- driver.findElement(By.className("myClass")) (Correct answer)
- driver.findElement(By.name("myClass"))
- driver.findElement(By.tagName("myClass"))
Correct answer: driver.findElement(By.className("myClass"))
By.className() is the Selenium locator strategy designed specifically to find elements by their CSS class attribute.
Question 5: Which Selenium method throws a NoSuchElementException when the target element is not present in the DOM?
- driver.findElements()
- driver.findElement() (Correct answer)
- driver.waitFor()
- driver.querySelector()
Correct answer: driver.findElement()
driver.findElement() throws NoSuchElementException immediately if no matching element is found, unlike findElements() which returns an empty list.
Question 6: Which locator strategy would you use to match a hyperlink whose text only partially matches the expected string?
- By.linkText()
- By.partialLinkText() (Correct answer)
- By.xpath()
- By.id()
Correct answer: By.partialLinkText()
By.partialLinkText() allows matching a substring of the anchor element's visible text without requiring the full string.
Question 7: What does driver.findElement(By.tagName("input")) return when multiple <input> elements exist on a page?
- All input elements as a list
- null
- The first matching input element in DOM order (Correct answer)
- Throws NoSuchElementException
Correct answer: The first matching input element in DOM order
findElement() always returns the first matching element encountered in DOM order when multiple matches exist.
Selenium Web Element Locators & Selectors 1
Which Selenium locator strategy is generally fastest and most reliable when an element has a unique ID attribute?