Handling pop ups/alert/confirmations/prompts in Selenium RC / WebDriver

In most web applications the handling of pop ups/alert/confirmations/prompts during the automation testing is a common issue.
In this post we will describe how we can use the SeleniumRC and the Webdriver in order to manage them.

Selenium RC

Selenium RC provides the 3 following methods in order to handle alert-confirmation and prompt pop-ups.

void chooseOkOnNextConfirmation();
void chooseCancelOnNextConfirmation();
void answerOnNextPrompt(answer);

The first two are used for hanling of alert-confirmation pop-ups and the third for prompt pop-ups
The tricky part with these methods is that they must called BEFORE the action that fires the pop-up.

Consider for example the following scenario:

Select a object from the page, Click on Delete button. It triggers a alert saying "Object is going to be deleted, Click OK to Confirm or Cancel to Cancel the Operation".

So if selenium is a Selenium instance, in order to Delete the object, the code snippet in out test automation script should be as follows:

selenium.chooseOkOnNextConfirmation();
selenium.click('locator of Delete button');

In order to Cancel the deletion of the object, the code snippet in out test automation script should be as follows:

selenium.chooseCancelOnNextConfirmation();
selenium.click('locator of Delete button');

Keep in mind that in both cases during the execution of the test automation script, the user WILL NOT SEE the actual alert pop-up but the action is done 'behind the scenes';

The code is similar in the case the action fires a prompt pop-up(the user is prompted to enter a text inside the pop-up)

selenium.answerOnNextPrompt('text');
selenium.click('locator of element that triggered the prompt');

Web Driver

Web Driver provides a more efficient manner to handle all these events through the Alert interface, using the following methods:

void dismiss();
void accept();
String getText();
void sendKeys(String keysToSend);

So if driver is a WebDriver instance, regarding the scenarios we mentioned earlier the code snippet in out test automation script should be as follows:

1st case

driver.findElement(By.id('id of Delete button')).click(); 
Alert myAlert = driver.switchTo().alert(); //Switch to alert pop-up
myAlert.accept(); //accept the alert - equivalent of pressing OK

2nd case

driver.findElement(By.id('id of Delete button')).click(); 
Alert myAlert = driver.switchTo().alert(); 
myAlert.dismiss(); //cancel the alert - equivalent of pressing CANCEL

3rd case

driver.findElement(By.id('id of web element')).click(); 
Alert myAlert = driver.switchTo().alert(); 
alert.sendkeys('text'); //Write text inside the prompt
myAlert.accept();

If you need to wait until the Alert present you can use the following code:

WebDriverWait driver = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10);
Alert myAlert = driver.until(ExpectedConditions.alertIsPresent());

It is important to notice two things here:

1. In the case of WebDriver the methods are called AFTER the action that fires the pop-up(which is the real case scenario), and 
2. During the execution of the test automation script, the user WILL BE ABLE TO SEE the actual alert pop-up (Web Driver simulates exactly the user case scenario).

Have fun...

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