Cracking the Code: My Adventure in JSON Parsing with Selenium WebDriver

Hi everyone. In today’s article i will try to explain how to read a JSON data with Selenium by executing a test case from TestNG in an automation site called DemoQA.

But because it is so hard to explain a code structure in plain text, I tried my best to make it more understandable by adding comment lines.

1-) Firstly, we need these dependencies imported to your Maven pom.xml file:

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.seleniumhq.selenium/selenium-java -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
            <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
            <version>4.11.0</version>
        </dependency>

<!-- this is for json -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.googlecode.json-simple</groupId>
            <artifactId>json-simple</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.1</version>
        </dependency>

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.testng/testng -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
            <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
            <version>7.1.0</version>
        </dependency>

2-) Then a simple JSON file (Elements.json) that includes the locators and the type’s that we will use in our code:

{
  "DemoQA": {
    "FullName": {
      "type": "xpath",
      "locator": "//input[@id='userName']"
    },
    "Email": {
      "type": "id",
      "locator": "userEmail"
    },
    "Current Address": {
      "type": "css",
      "locator": "#currentAddress"
    },
    "Permanent Address": {
      "type": "classname",
      "locator": "btn btn-primary"
    }
  }
}

3-) Let’s create a Java class and read the JSON:

🔶3.1-) Example of Parsing and Printing JSON Data:

public class JsonReadingClass{
  public static void Main(String[] args){
    
 // 1. Defines the file path for the JSON file containing the data.
        String jsonFile = "src/test/resources/datafiles/Elements.json";

 // 2. Reads the JSON file for the first time and parses it into a JSONObject.
 //    The contents of the JSON file are parsed and stored in the 'object' variable.
        JSONObject object = (JSONObject) JSONValue.parse(new FileReader(jsonFile));
    
 // 3. This statement outputs the entire parsed JSON object to the console.   
        System.out.println(object);
  }

}
/*
The result: 
{
  "DemoQA": {
    "Current Address": {
      "type": "css",
      "locator": "#currentAddress"
    },
    "Email": {
      "type": "id",
      "locator": "userEmail"
    },
    "Permanent Address": {
      "type": "classname",
      "locator": "btn btn-primary"
    },
    "FullName": {
      "type": "xpath",
      "locator": "//input[@id='userName']"
    }
  }
}
*/

🔶3.2-) Parsing JSON Element Type and Locator:

public class jsonReadingClass{
  public static void Main(String[] args){
    
 String JSONFile = "src/test/resources/datafiles/Elements.json";

// 1. Parses the JSON file as a whole into a JSONObject.
JSONObject object = (JSONObject) JSONValue.parse(new FileReader(JSONFile));

// 2. Extracts the 'FullName' object under the 'DemoQA' section from the parsed JSON data.
JSONObject demoQA = (JSONObject) object.get("DemoQA");
JSONObject fullName = (JSONObject) demoQA.get("FullName");

// 3. Extracts 'type' and 'locator' values from the 'FullName' object.
String type = fullName.get("type").toString();
String locator = fullName.get("locator").toString();

// 4. Prints the extracted 'type' and 'locator' values to the console.
System.out.println("type = " + type);
System.out.println("locator = " + locator);
  }

}

/*
The result: 
type = xpath
locator = //input[@id='userName']
*/

Okay, we got the basics down, but how on earth would you convert this into something usable? Well, here we will head over to the fourth step. Which is Writing a switch case method:

4-) This method is for Mapping Types to WebDriver Locators:

// This method returns a By object based on the given type and locator.
public static By getBy(String type, String locator) {

            switch (type) {
                case "xpath" -> {
                    return By.xpath(locator);
                }
                case "css" -> {
                    return By.cssSelector(locator);
                }
                case "id" -> {
                    return By.id(locator);
                }
                case "tagname" -> {
                    return By.tagName(locator);
                }
                case "classname" -> {
                    return By.className(locator);
                }
                case "linktext" -> {
                    return By.linkText(locator);
                }
                case "partiallinktext" -> {
                    return By.partialLinkText(locator);
                }
                default -> {
                    return null;
                }
            }
        }

Now, let’s also mix the Step 3.2 and the Step 4 as a method, because it will be so much easier for us.

5-) JSON Configuration-based Web Element Locating method:

/**
 * Retrieves a web element locator using JSON configuration.
 *
 * @param main The main node within the JSON structure.
 * @param sub  The sub-node containing 'type' and 'locator' information.
 * @return By object representing the located web element.
 * @throws FileNotFoundException If the JSON file specified by 'jsonFile' is not found.
 */
public static By getBy(String main, String sub) throws FileNotFoundException {
    // 1. Defines the file path for the JSON file containing the data.
    String jsonFile = "src/test/resources/datafiles/Elements.json";

    // 2. Reads the JSON file and parses its contents into a JSONObject.
    JSONObject object = (JSONObject) JSONValue.parse(new FileReader(jsonFile));

    // 3. Extracts the JSON objects corresponding to the specified 'main' and 'sub' nodes.
    JSONObject mainNode = (JSONObject) object.get(main);
    JSONObject subNode = (JSONObject) mainNode.get(sub);

    // 4. Extracts 'type' and 'locator' values from the 'sub' node.
    String type = subNode.get("type").toString();
    String locator = subNode.get("locator").toString();

    // 5. Returns a By object based on the extracted 'type' and 'locator'.
    switch (type) {
        case "xpath" -> {
            return By.xpath(locator);
        }
        case "css" -> {
            return By.cssSelector(locator);
        }
        case "id" -> {
            return By.id(locator);
        }
        case "tagname" -> {
            return By.tagName(locator);
        }
        case "classname" -> {
            return By.className(locator);
        }
        case "linktext" -> {
            return By.linkText(locator);
        }
        case "partiallinktext" -> {
            return By.partialLinkText(locator);
        }
        default -> {
            return null;
        }
    }
}

6-) Here comes the final class to unite the 2 methods above within a test case powered by TestNG!

public class JsonTest {
    WebDriver driver;

    {
        driver = new ChromeDriver();
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofSeconds(10));
    }

    @Test
    public void test1() throws FileNotFoundException {
        driver.get("https://demoqa.com/text-box");
        driver.findElement(getBy("DemoQA","FullName")).sendKeys("hasan");
        driver.findElement(getBy("DemoQA","Email")).sendKeys("test@test.com");
        driver.findElement(getBy("DemoQA","Current Address")).sendKeys("Qatar");
        driver.quit();


    }

    public static By getBy(String main, String sub) throws FileNotFoundException {

        String jsonFile = "src/test/resources/datafiles/Elements.json";

        JSONObject object = (JSONObject) JSONValue.parse(new FileReader(jsonFile));
        JSONObject mainNode = (JSONObject) object.get(main);
        JSONObject subNode = (JSONObject) mainNode.get(sub);


        String type = subNode.get("type").toString();
        String locator = subNode.get("locator").toString();

        switch (type) {
            case "xpath" -> {
                return By.xpath(locator);
            }
            case "css" -> {
                return By.cssSelector(locator);
            }
            case "id" -> {
                return By.id(locator);
            }
            case "tagname" -> {
                return By.tagName(locator);
            }
            case "classname" -> {
                return By.className(locator);
            }
            case "linktext" -> {
                return By.linkText(locator);
            }
            case "partiallinktext" -> {
                return By.partialLinkText(locator);
            }
            default -> {
                return null;
            }
        }

    }

}

In summary, this code demonstrates a basic Selenium WebDriver test case that interacts with the elements on a page using locators fetched from a JSON file.

🎗️Connect with me on LinkedIn: Hasan Özyer | LinkedIn

🎗️Check out my GitHub: hasanozye (Hasan) (github.com)

🎗️For inquiries, please feel free to reach me at: hasanozyer06@gmail.com