Understanding the Document Object Model and Creating Customized XPaths

In the previous chapter, we had a look at Selenium RC, WebDriver, the basic Eclipse setup, and a very simple program. Opening the browser and loading a web page is OK to start with but it is not of much use if one is not able to do operations such as clicking links and buttons, selecting values from dropdowns, entering text in a textbox, and so on. In order to achieve this, we have to explore what is called the Document Object Model (DOM). The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• What is the DOM?
• DOM traversal
• What is the Fillo API?
• Debugging in Eclipse

The four major topics will be explained in detail in the form of sub-topics throughout the chapter.