Selenium automating ICEFaces Application - locator for dynamically generated ids

Question

I'm trying to automate a very short sequence in a web application developped using ICEFaces. I need to click on a button which is coded as

<input type="image" title="Unterbrechen" style="padding: 3px;" 
src="../resources/images/icons/pause_square_red_24.png" 
onfocus="setFocus(this.id);" onclick="iceSubmit(form,this,event);return false;"
onblur="setFocus('');" name="formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id5330" 
id="formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id5330" class="iceCmdBtn">

But on the next call, the same button is coded as follows:

<input type="image" title="Unterbrechen" style="padding: 3px;" 
src="../resources/images/icons/pause_square_red_24.png" 
onfocus="setFocus(this.id);" onclick="iceSubmit(form,this,event);return false;" 
onblur="setFocus('');" name="formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id6813" 
id="formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id6813" class="iceCmdBtn">

The name and id have changed:

id="formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id5330"

to

id="formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id6813"

Of course, all the ancestor elements change their names and ids in the same pattern too.

How can I reliably identify this button and define a locator for this element in selenium?

Thanks for your help!

• Sam Woods: If you are still unable to figure it out from the article that user1316 suggests, post more of the html so we can see how the ancestors change as well and I could probably help you figure out some xpath to use. Alternatively, is the title unique? Does it change? You may be able to use it.
• Oli: I'll check that out - didn't have the time yet... sorry

Answer 1

Here is a link from good old stack overflow wherein a similar issue has been discussed/answered. Hope it helps.

Answer 2

There are a lot of ways to identify an element, and it depends on the structure of the application in question. In your case, the id is dynamic. But, I notice a few things that are not dynamic:

• All attributes except for id and name
• id and name's prefix ("formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id")

Also, is it possible that this is located in a known XPATH location? Maybe it's a child element of another element whose id is deterministic. In that case, you could write an XPATH such as:

//div[@id='foo']/input[startswith(@id, 'formGOC:j_id52:0:j_id')]'

Answer 3

You can use xpath to locate the element.

If you add Firepath to Firefox it will give different code for eache component. you can download it from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firepath/

This link may help you: http://diveintotesting.com/2013/02/21/web-page-object-identification-using-firebug-and-firepath/

• Oli: Thanks for your suggestion. The problem is, that the names and ids change, so I don't know how to find them in the first place. I left the project in the meantime before I could try to use comments or hidden fields to add some metadata.