Work with Web Inspector

This section covers the basic scenarios of working with the Web Inspector functionality and provides information on how to utilize it in different contexts.

Obtain locators for selected elements

Open a website

To start working with the Web Inspector, you need to open the desired website. To do this:

Specify the URL address in the address bar and press Enter.
If the website is mentioned somewhere in your code, place the caret at the URL, press Alt+Enter, and select the Open in Web Inspector option.

The web page opens in the Web Inspector.

Select a web element

To add an element to your code, you need to select it first. There are several ways to do this:

Click the button located in the Locators Evaluator section and select the desired element.
Start typing the locator or its substring in the search field of the Locators Evaluator section. The auto-completion feature suggests a list of elements to choose from.
Select the required element in the Page structure section.

Once you selected an element, Aqua generates a unique locator for it. This ensures that each locator points to a specific element on the page.

Add elements to code

To add the element to your code, do one of the following:

Click the button in the Locators Evaluator section. Prior to this, you can select the type of the locator (CSS, XPath) by clicking the button.
If you want to add an element to your code using a specific selector (ID, Name, Tag with classes, and so on), click the button and select the desired one from the list.
You can add a selector that will match multiple elements. For this, hold Shift while adding the selector.

As a result, a piece of code is generated for the supported framework and added to the code editor. If the system defined the framework incorrectly, you can manually change it.

You can also simply copy the locator to clipboard by clicking the button. After that, you can manually add the copied locator to your code.

Validate locators

To verify that the locator is valid and points to the correct element on the web page, do one of the following:

In the code editor, click the icon next to the locator that you want to validate.
If the locator is valid, the Web Inspector tool window opens, and the appropriate element gets highlighted in the Web Inspector and Page structure section.
You can also tell if the locator is valid by looking at the digit next to the icon. If it is 0, the locator has no matching elements, thus it is not valid.
Copy your locator and paste it to the search field in the Locators Evaluator section. If there are no matches, the locator is invalid.

Navigate to elements from code

If you want to check to which element on the webpage the selected locator is related, do either of the following:

In the code editor, click near the locator.
Place the caret at the locator and press Alt+Enter. Then, select the Evaluate in Web Inspector option to navigate to the web element.
Click the locator while holding the Control key.

As a result, the Web Inspector tool window opens, and the corresponding element gets highlighted.

Last modified: 16 August 2023