Post#47.Handling Alerts in Selenium

Alerts

Alerts are basically popup boxes that take your focus away from the current browser and force you to read the alert message. You need to do some action such as accept or dismiss the alert box to resume your task on the browser.

Alert prevents the user from accessing other parts of the web page until the box is closed.

To handle alerts popups we need to do switch to the alert window and call Selenium WebDriver Alert API methods.

Alert Types:

1.      Alert

2.      Confirmation dialog

3.      Prompt

Properties of Alerts with respect to Selenium:

• We cannot identify alerts using inspect tools
• We cannot write xpaths for alerts
• It is not a Window
• We cannot handle alerts using javaScript Executor

We can consider as not alert if any of the above property mismatches.

Code of Alert handling in selenium

When alert is present on webpage we cannot proceed further without handling the popup, and if we try to perform any operation it throws org.openqa.selenium.UnhandledAlertException.
We can handle alerts using switchTo().alert() method present in selenium, with help of this alert() we can handle the pop up.
Syntax to handle popup

Alert ale = driver.switchTo().alert();

Note : Selenium up-cast the object to Alert Interface in above line of code With this api we can perform below operations on the pop up.

1. Accept the popUp by clicking OK button

ale.accept();

2. Dismiss the popUp by clicking 'X' icon.

ale.dismiss();

3. Get popUp text by getText method

ale.getText();

4. Send text to popUp by sendKeys (Applicable for Prompt only)

ale.sendKeys("test Text");

Note : webdriver never clicks Cancel button on any kind of alert

When does alerts occurs on a page : It can occur on a page on any time but most of the it happens on below timing of the webpage

1.      On Webpage Load

2.      On Webpage close

3.      On click of a element

4.      On Right click (when right click disabled)

5.      On wrong entry of a field

6.      On information save

Note: Now day developers are using overlays/hidden division popups rather than javascript popups.

Alert

The alert() method displays an alert box with a message and an OK button, alert box is often used to inform a user about a particular operation like details saved in Database, right click disabled, Loaded successfully such kind of messages.

Alert is formed using alert("message") in javascript, alert considers same irrespective of user operation whether he clicks OK or 'X' icon. 

Alert's sole purpose is to inform user, nothing more.

Alert on Different browsers 

Chrome:

Firefox:

• Open Url : https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/javascript_alerts
• Click on Alert button, application throws an Alert box
• Switch to the alert using driver.switchTo().alert(), we save this object in Alert type variable 'ale'
• We can accept the alert by using accept() non-static method from the alert api, this closes the popup.

driver.get("https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/javascript_alerts");

driver.findElement(By.name("alert")).click();

Alert ale = driver.switchTo().alert();

// clicks 'OK' button

ale.accept();

• We can dismiss the popup using dismiss() method from alert api, this click 'X' icon on popup. (if you have performed above step then you cannot perform this step as pop up is closed in step 4 itself)

Alert ale = driver.switchTo().alert();

//clicks 'x' icon

ale.dismiss();

• We can get the text from the pop up using getText(), if you have performed step 4 or 5, this step will not work

Alert ale = driver.switchTo().alert();

//clicks 'x' icon

ale.getText();

Confirmation Box

Confirmation box is second kind of alert, it displays a dialog with OK and Cancel button

Confirmation box informs developer about user choice whether user pressed OK or Cancel. The confirm() method returns true if the user clicked "OK", and false otherwise('X' icon and 'Cancel') to developer. 

Confirmation box

We can handle Confirmation box in selenium like alert box, there is no coding difference.

Prompt

Prompt is used to get value from the user in text format. Prompt provides textbar for user input, Prompt is rarely used alert type.

Prompt :

Prompt also follows same coding as alert and prompt except sendkeys method, we can send text to prompt textbar using sendkeys() method in alerts api.

Note : You cannot use Keys.ENTER or such kind of keys with sendkeys() method of alerts

driver.get("https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/javascript_alerts");

driver.findElement(By.name("prompt")).click();

Alert ale = driver.switchTo().alert();

ale.sendKeys("Sujoy");

How to check whether alert is present or Not ?

We can use Explicit wait / WebdriverWait to check whether alert is there or not, alertIsPresent() method wait for the alert to be present till the given timeout, once it reaches timeout and if alert is not present then it throws TimeOutException, if alert is present before the timeout it proceeds with remaining code.

I have used only 2 seconds of time to check for the alert.

public static boolean isAlertPresent(){

    boolean presenceOfAlert = false;

    WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 2 /*timeout in seconds*/);

    try {

        wait.until(ExpectedConditions.alertIsPresent());

        presenceOfAlert = true;

    } catch (TimeoutException e) {

        presenceOfAlert = false;

    }

    return foundAlert;

}

Explanation :

·         We are setting presenceOfAlert to false, this is for by default value.

·         We are creating object for WebdriverWait

·         We are using try{} block to see whether code throws exception or not

·         We are checking whether alert is there or not using alertIsPresent() method. If alert is present execution goes to next line where we have set presenceOfAlert to true, but incase if alert is not there it will not execute "presenceOfAlert = true;" statement but goes to catch block.

·         We have used catch{} block to receive the exception, this catch block receives only TimeoutException

·         If try block code throws TimeoutException then "presenceOfAlert = false;" will be executed

·         Method returns the value based on the try catch block / based on presence of alert.

Screenshot of an Alert

Taking screenshot without handling alert is not possible, but you can take screenshot using robot or any other external class present in java.
What you cannot do is, you cannot use the driver instance for any operation without handling the alert.
Actually below code copies the screenshot to clipboard.

//Press the key combination of (Windows + PrintScreen) by using Robot Class

Robot rb = new Robot();

rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_WINDOWS);

rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_PRINTSCREEN);

rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_PRINTSCREEN);

rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_WINDOWS);