Locating WebElements using WebDriver 

Let's start this section by automating the Search feature from the Homepage of the demo application, http://demo-store.seleniumacademy.com/, which involves navigating to the homepage, typing the search text in the textbox, and executing the search. The code is as follows:

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.testng.annotations.AfterMethod;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeMethod;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;

import static org.assertj.core.api.AssertionsForClassTypes.assertThat;

public class SearchTest {

    WebDriver driver;

    @BeforeMethod
    public void setup() {
        System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver",
                "./src/test/resources/drivers/chromedriver");
        driver = new ChromeDriver();
        driver.get("http://demo-store.seleniumacademy.com/");
    }

    @Test
    public void searchProduct() {
        // find search box and enter search string
        WebElement searchBox = driver.findElement(By.name("q"));
        searchBox.sendKeys("Phones");
        WebElement searchButton = 
                driver.findElement(By.className("search-button"));
        searchButton.click();
        assertThat(driver.getTitle())
                .isEqualTo("Search results for: 'Phones'");
    }

    @AfterMethod
    public void tearDown() {
        driver.quit();
    }
}

As you can see, there are three new things that are highlighted, as follows:

WebElement searchBox = driver.findElement(By.name("q"));

They are the findElement() method, the By.name() method, and the WebElement interface. The findElement() and By() methods instruct WebDriver to locate a WebElement on a web page, and once found, the findElement() method returns the WebElement instance of that element. Actions, such as click and type, are performed on a returned WebElement using the methods declared in the WebElement interface, which will be discussed in detail in the next section.