findElement Method in Selenium

Question

I want to understand the different interfaces and classes implemented in Selenium methods

I came to know that Interface SearchContext is inherited by interface WebDriver and which in turn is implemented by different classes like ForefoxDriver and so on....

findElement is a method as part of SearchContext interface and which is implemented by the Firefox driver. There is another class called "By" which has of nested subclasses.

Syntax for findElement is:

driver.findElement(By.name("abc"));

Can anyone tell me what exactly is the parameter which is passed to this findElement function?

Answer 1

This is a way in which Selenium selects elements, this is similar to fluent API. 

It makes easy for the users to read. The parameter you pass into findElement is kind of like a pseudo-selector query, like Jsoup.

For example, if you wanted to select the logo at the top right hand corner of this page, you could do

driver.findElement(By.id("hlogo"));

So the query By.name("q") basically selects element(s) with the attribute, name="abc"