Difference between Action and Actions in Selenium

Question

What are the differences between Action and Actions in Selenium

Answer 1

Action is an interface :

public interface Action

Action Interface represents a single user-interaction action.

and Actions is a Class that extends Object class

public class Actions

extends java.lang.Object

Use this class rather than using the Keyboard or Mouse directly.

For further understanding, you can refer to the Selenium Training.

Answer 2

 Actions class is based on builder design pattern which builds a composite actions with the aggregation of Selenium WebDriver, where webdriver is only used to identify the presence of web elements on web application

 Action interface is only used to represent the single user interaction i.e to perform the series of action items build by Actions class. 

Example:-

Let's Assume we want to Sent text in Caps in Text field. We need to Press SHIFT and then send Text and then we will release from SHIFT key.

Performing all the task at a time  using Selenium API we will use Actions class and Action interface.

1) Actions actions = new Actions(webdriver object);

 Since we need to perform all action one by one  like this "actions.

2)  keyDown(element, Keys.SHIFT) + sendKeys(“Text_In_UpperCase”) + keyUp(Keys.SHIFT)".

we can clubbed all action together as below.

 3) actions.keyDown(element, Keys.SHIFT).sendKeys(“Text_In_UpperCase”).keyUp(Keys.SHIFT);

Now,We need to build this sequence using the build() method of Actions class and get the composite action.

4) Action action = actions.build();

Keep in mind that the build method always returns “Action type object”  so  we need to create reference of Action Interface and hold  all builder's Actions.

And finally, perform the actions sequence using perform() method of Action Interface.

5) action.perform();

   

In short we can use:-

actions.keyDown(element,   Keys.SHIFT).sendKeys(“Text_In_UpperCase”).keyUp(Keys.SHIFT).build().perform();

Comments

Hi Virendra, can you explain your answer with some example or dummy code?

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@Virendra, thanks for sharing the examples and explaining the differences this well. Please look at the other threads also, which you think you can contribute to.