How to Work With Frames in Selenium Web Drivers

An iFrame is a another HTML document embedded inside the HTML document on a Website. The content inside the iFrame generally come from another source . The content may be an Advertisement. iFrame behave like  a inline image so it have its own independent scrollbar from the whole web page. A Web designer can change the content of iframe without reload the whole web page. A web page may have many iFrame. a iFrame can be inside of another iFrame.


In Selenium Web Driver we have 3 way to handle Frames.
1) driver.switchTo().frame(int arg0)
2) driver.switchTo().frame(String argo)
3) driver.switchTo().frame(WebElement frameElement)

1) driver.switchTo().frame(int arg0): 
By using this user can select the particular frame by using Index value. The frame count start with "0" if there are more then 1 frame.
Once selenium switch to the frame then the focus of Selenium Web driver will change to Frame . 
First you can get the total counts of the frame in any web page. Selenium have the method to do it


package seleniumPackage1; import java.util.List; import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest; import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest; import org.testng.annotations.Test; public class SeleniumClass1 { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); @BeforeTest public void browserOpen() { driver.get("https://in.yahoo.com/?p=us"); driver.manage().window().maximize(); } @Test public void workingWithFrame() throws InterruptedException { List<webelement> iframe = driver.findElements(By.tagName("iframe")); System.out.println("Noumber of frame : "+ iframe.size()); } @AfterTest public void browserClose() { driver.close(); } }

here you can see that number of frame found = 5. Now suppose you want to switch to the  Frame 1 which have Index 0 so below is the code.

package seleniumPackage1; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest; import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest; import org.testng.annotations.Test; public class SeleniumClass1 { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); @BeforeTest public void browserOpen() { driver.get("https://in.yahoo.com/?p=us"); driver.manage().window().maximize(); } @Test public void workingWithFrame() { driver.switchTo().frame(0); } @AfterTest public void browserClose() { driver.close(); } }

Now you have control over frame 1. This method is useful only when there is one frame because frame position can be changed.

2) driver.switchTo().frame(String argo):
Here Selenium Web driver will select frame by using Id or Name. 
See below Image

package seleniumPackage1; import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest; import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest; import org.testng.annotations.Test; public class SeleniumClass1 { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); @BeforeTest public void browserOpen() { driver.get("https://in.yahoo.com/?p=us"); driver.manage().window().maximize(); } @Test public void workingWithFrame() { driver.switchTo().frame("darla_csc_writer_0"); } @AfterTest public void browserClose() { driver.close(); } }

If there is Name and Id is not provided for any iFrame then  this method will not work. For this user need to use 3rd Method.

3) driver.switchTo().frame(WebElement frameElement):
In this method Selenium Web Driver will locate iframe by using previous select WebElement.
See Below Image

package seleniumPackage1; import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest; import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest; import org.testng.annotations.Test; public class SeleniumClass1 { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); @BeforeTest public void browserOpen() { driver.get("https://in.yahoo.com/?p=us"); driver.manage().window().maximize(); } @Test public void workingWithFrame() { driver.switchTo().frame(driver.findElement(By.xpath("//iframe[@class='Pos(a) Start(0) W(100%) H(100%) Bd(0)']"))); } @AfterTest public void browserClose() { driver.close(); } }

If user want to switch back to the main window then use defaultContent() function
below is the code
package seleniumPackage1; import org.openqa.selenium.By; import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest; import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest; import org.testng.annotations.Test; public class SeleniumClass1 { WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); @BeforeTest public void browserOpen() { driver.get("https://in.yahoo.com/?p=us"); driver.manage().window().maximize(); } @Test public void workingWithFrame() { driver.switchTo().frame(driver.findElement(By.xpath("//iframe[@class='Pos(a) Start(0) W(100%) H(100%) Bd(0)']"))); driver.switchTo().defaultContent(); } @AfterTest public void browserClose() { driver.close(); } }