How to Extract/Validate Dynamic Webpage Elements
Parasoft: How to Extract/Validate Dynamic Webpage Elements
Description:
In some applications, we may come across dynamic elements whose ids/xPaths change every time the web page reloads. This can become challenging to extract/validate such elements. Below are a few techniques used to handle dynamic elements.
Solution:
Method 1:
There are different Xpath methods/functions to capture these dynamic elements. Initially, we may want to use Chrome’s web-developer tools or Firefox’s Firebug (add-on) tool to find the element’s Xpath. For this example, I will be using a short Chrome web-recording of https://www.parasoft.com/. We will focus on the “Product” menu item and assume it is “dynamic”.
The Web Scenario goes as follows:
1)In a Chrome Browser, inspect (Right-Click) the element 
2)A dialog box will open (F12). Hover over or inspect the element to find its appropriate snippet of code: 
3)Select the desired line and copy the Xpath
Xpath: //*[@id="menu-item-6192"]/a
4)Select the Browser Contents Viewer and Extract the desired element to generate a validation tool
Assuming that the desired Property value is not present in this wizard, simply choose any one of the available properites and choose “Finish”.
5)Double-click on the new Validation Tool and fill in the fields with the appropriate content
Note: You can Inspect the element if you wish to verify what the Expected Value should be:
6)After filling in all the fields shown below, run your test to verify the results
Method 2:
Two very useful Xpath functions to extract dynamic elements are “Starts-with” and “Contains”
1)“Starts-with” function allows us to identify the dynamic element by the starting text:
2)“Contains” function allows us to identify the dynamic element in scenarios where the element is surrounded by a static value 
More information on how to handle dynamic elements can be found in the following link:
http://www.testerlogic.com/handling-dynamic-elements-in-selenium-webdriver/