How to Handle Alerts/Popups in Selenium WebDriver

There are two types of alerts that we would be focusing on majorly:

Windows based alert pop ups

Web based alert pop ups

As we know that handling windows based pop ups is beyond WebDriver’s capabilities, thus we would exercise some third party utilities to handle window pop ups.

Handling pop up is one of the most challenging piece of work to automate while testing web applications. Owing to the diversity in types of pop ups complexes the situation even more.

What is Alert box/ Pop up box/ confirmation Box/ Prompt/ Authentication Box?

It is nothing but a small box that appears on the display screen to give you some kind of information or to warn you about a potentially damaging operation or it may even ask you for the permissions for the operation.

Example: Let us consider a real life example for a better understanding; Let us assume that we uploaded a photograph on any of these popular social networking sites. Later on, i wish to delete the uploaded photograph. So in order to delete, i clicked on the delete button. As soon as I click on the delete button, the system warns me against my action, prompting – Do you really want to delete the file? So now we have an option to either accept this alert or reject it.

So ahead in the session, let’s see how do we reject or accept the alerts depending on their types. Starting with the web based pop ups.

Let us see how do we handle them using WebDriver.

Handling web based pop-up box

WebDriver offers the users with a very efficient way to handle these pop ups using Alert interface.

There are the four methods that we would be using along with the Alert interface.

1) void dismiss() – The dismiss() method clicks on the “Cancel” button as soon as the pop up window appears.

2) void accept() – The accept() method clicks on the “Ok” button as soon as the pop up window appears.

3) String getText() – The getText() method returns the text displayed on the alert box.

4) void sendKeys(String stringToSend) – The sendKeys() method enters the specified string pattern into the alert box.

Let us move ahead and look at the actual implementation.

Scenario to be automated

Launch the web browser and open the webpage

Click on the “Try it” button

Accept the alert

Click on the “Try it” button again

Reject the alert

WebDriver Code using Select Class

Please take a note that for script creation, we would be using “Learning_Selenium” project created in the former tutorial.

Step 1: Create a new java class named as “DemoWebAlert” under the “Learning_Selenium” project.

Step 2: Copy and paste the below code in the “DemoWebAlert.java” class.

Below is the test script that is equivalent to the above mentioned scenario.

import org.junit.After;

import org.junit.Before;

import org.junit.Test;

import org.openqa.selenium.Alert;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

/**

* class description

*/

public class DemoWebAlert {

                WebDriver driver;

                /**

                * Constructor

                */

                public DemoWebAlert() {                          

                }

                /**

                * Set up browser settings and open the application

                */

                @Before

                public void setUp() {

                                driver=new FirefoxDriver();

                                // Opened the application

                                driver.get("file:///F:/Work/Selenium/Testing-Presentation/DemoWebPopup.htm");

                                driver.manage().window().maximize();

                }

                /**

                * Test to check Select functionality

                * @throws InterruptedException

                */

                @Test

                public void testWebAlert() throws InterruptedException {                        

                                // clicking on try it button

                                driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[contains(text(),'Try it')]")).click();

                                Thread.sleep(5000);

                                // accepting javascript alert

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

                                alert.accept();

                                // clicking on try it button

                                driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[contains(text(),'Try it')]")).click();

                                Thread.sleep(5000);

                                // accepting javascript alert

                                driver.switchTo().alert().dismiss();

                                // clicking on try it button

                                driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[contains(text(),'Try it')]")).click();

                                Thread.sleep(5000);

                                // accepting javascript alert

                                System.out.println(driver.switchTo().alert().getText());

                                driver.switchTo().alert().accept();

                }

                /**

                * Tear down the setup after test completes

                */

                @After

                public void tearDown() {           

                    driver.quit();

                }

}

Import Statements

Import org.openqa.selenium.Alert – Import this package prior to the script creation The package references to the Alert class which is required to handle the web based alerts in WebDriver.

Object Creation for Alert class

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

We create a reference variable for Alert class and references it to the alert.

Switch to Alert

Driver.switchTo().alert();

The above command is used to switch the control to the recently generated pop up window.

Accept the Alert

alert.accept();

The above command accepts the alert thereby clicking on the Ok button.

Reject the Alert

alert.dismiss();

The above command closes the alert thereby clicking on the Cancel button and hence the operation should not proceed.