Working with IFrame elements and Selenium 2+ in C#

I added a lengthy answer to the StackOverflow question on switching focus to an iFrame when using Selenium to automate a UI for testing and thought it deserved a blog post.

First you need to select the iFrame and switch the driver context to it. The iFrame I’m working against doesn’t have an id, and there will only be one on this particular page.

This is an example of using it straight out of the box. I have access to the driver through a static property. I set this when I first told Selenium what type of browser I wanted to use. (example Driver = new FirefoxDriver();)

try { var iFrameElement = Driver.FindElementByTagName("iFrame"); var driver = Driver.SwitchTo().Frame(this.iFrameElement);
var element = driver.FindElement(selector);

// do what you need with the element

} finally { // don't forget to switch back to the DefaultContent Driver.SwitchTo().DefaultContent(); }

Note: You have to get the information from the IWebElement .Text or .Click for example, before calling Driver.SwitchTo().DefaultContent();

Then I created some extension methods to make this easier to call.

///

/// Switch to the IFrame and get the new driver. /// Call SwitchOutofIFrame after done working with the element. ///

/// the current driver /// the IFrame driver. public static IWebDriver SwitchToIFrame(this RemoteWebDriver driver) { // http://computerrecipes.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/selenium-webdriver-interact-with-an-element-inside-an-iframe/ // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3549584/selenium-2-switching-focus-to-a-frame-that-has-no-name-id var iFrameElement = driver.FindElementByTagName("iFrame"); return driver.SwitchTo().Frame(iFrameElement); }

///

/// Switch back to the default content. ///

/// the current driver public static void SwitchOutOfIFrame(this IWebDriver driver) { driver.SwitchTo().DefaultContent(); }

public static void ClickIFrameElement(this RemoteWebDriver driver, By selector) { var iFrameDriver = driver.SwitchToIFrame(); try { iFrameDriver.GetAndWaitForElement(selector).Clik(); } finally { driver.SwitchOutOfIFrame(); } }

public static string GetTextFromIFrameElement(this RemoteWebDriver driver, By selector) { var iFrameDriver = driver.SwitchToIFrame(); try { return iFrameDriver.GetAndWaitForElement(selector).Text; } finally { driver.SwitchOutOfIFrame(); } }

///

/// Use the WebDriverWait to find an element. If it doesn't find it after before the timeout an exception is thrown. ///

/// The current driver Browser.Driver. /// how to find the element /// if the element isn't found after the timeout /// IWebElement public static IWebElement GetAndWaitForElement(this IWebDriver driver, By bySelector) { try { // give more time on the agents var wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(ProcessBase.IsRunningOnTestAgent ? 15 : 5)); return wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementIsVisible(bySelector)); } catch (Exception e) { // breakpoint here to retry for debugging. Trace.WriteLine(e.Message + " Selector: " + bySelector); throw; } }

And this is what my Page.cs that represents a web page can look like with the extension methods:

public string GetTitle() { return Browser.Driver.GetTextFromIFrameElement(By.Id("pageTitle")); }

public void ClickPrintButton() { Browser.Driver.ClickIFrameElement(By.Id("printButton")); }

The limitation with the extension methods is that they limit what you can get out of the element, before it switches back the default content. When more is needed, use the first plain vanilla call to switchTo or a combination of the extension methods inline.