Add support for dynamic locators in page objects with @FindBy annotations

Background

Selenide allows to use page objects with annotations like @FindBy:

  @AndroidFindBy(id = "op_add")
  @iOSFindBy(id = "op_add")
  private SelenideElement plus;

The problem

It doesn’t allow using of dynamic locators (when “op_add” is not a compile-time constant, but needs to be calculated in runtime).

Suggestion

Selenide could allow using dynamic locators by such an API:

  @AndroidFindBy(id = "opa_${zopa}")
  @iOSFindBy(id = "${zopa}_opa")
  private SelenideElement plus(String zopa);

In this case, plus would me method, not field - which is even better in terms of page object idea. And Selenide would need to create a “proxy” object implementing this method on-the-fly.

@BorisOsipov @rosolko @yashaka What do you think?

[yashaka]

IMHO all this “FindBy” annotation-based syntax is “magical”, and not straightforward. Moreover @FindBy comes from PageFactory of Selenium Webdriver, where PageFactory was deprecated, correct me If I am wrong regarding deprecation…

I prefer more straight forward style of elemet definition, like:

foo = $("#foo);

In case of Mobile, on my projects, I have implemented a wrapper over SelelenideElement, that allows the following style:

foobar = drd("foo").ios("bar");

I find this style more straightforward, obvious and oop-natural. And more powerful. You can then build your PageObjects like you want as normal java objects.

So I would deprecate FindBy at all:)

[asolntsev]

it seems we can close it because people didn’t like the idea.