button | <input> tags with type=button, submit, image or reset |
radio | <input> tags with the type=radio; known as radio buttons |
check_box | <input> tags with type=checkbox |
text_field | <input> tags with the type=text (single-line), type=textarea (multi-line), and type=password |
hidden | <input> tags with type=hidden |
select_list | <select> tags, known as drop-downs or drop-down lists |
label | <label> tags (including "for" attribute) |
span | <span> tags |
div | <div> tags |
p | <p> (paragraph) tags |
link | <a> (anchor) tags |
table | <table> tags, including row and cell methods for accessing nested elements |
image | <img> tags |
form | <form> tags |
frame | frames, including both the <frame> elements and the corresponding pages |
map | <map> tags |
area | <area> tags |
li | <li> tags |
h1 - h6 | <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6> tags |
:id | Used to find an element that has an "id=" attribute. Since each id should be unique, according to the XHTML specification, this is recommended as the most reliable method to find an object. * |
:name | Used to find an element that has a "name=" attribute. This is useful for older versions of HTML, but "name" is deprecated in XHTML. * |
:value | Used to find a text field with a given default value, or a button with a given caption, or a text field |
:text | Used for links, spans, divs and other element that contain text. |
:index | Used to find the nth element of the specified type on a page. For example, button(:index, 2) finds the second button. Current versions of WATIR use 1-based indexing, but future versions will use 0-based indexing. |
:class | Used for an element that has a "class=" attribute. |
:title | Used for an element that has a "title=" attribute. |
:xpath | Finds the item using xpath query. |
:method | Used only for forms, the method attribute of a form is either GET or POST. |
:action | Used only for form elements, specifies the URL where the form is to be submitted. |
:href | Used to identify a link by its "href=" attribute. |
:src | Used to identify an image by its URL.
|
* :id and :name are the quickest of these to process, and so should be used when possible to speed up scripts.