We could define a selector using `JQuery` [type selectors](https://api.jquery.com/category/selectors/) with a string like `'.gf-form-input.login-form-input'` but that would be brittle as style changes occur frequently. Furthermore there is nothing that signals to future developers that this input is part of an e2e test.
At Grafana, we use `aria-label` as our preferred way of defining selectors instead of `data-*` attributes. This also aids in accessibility.
Let's add a descriptive `aria-label` to our simple example.
Now that we added the `aria-label` we suddenly get more information about this particular field. It's an input field that represents a username, but there it's still not really signaling that it's part of an e2e test.
The next step is to create a `Page` representation in our e2e test framework to glue the test with the real implementation using the `pageFactory` function. For that function we can supply a `url` and `selectors` like in the example below:
```typescript
export const Login = pageFactory({
url: '/login', // used when called from Login.visit()
selectors: {
username: 'Username input field', // used when called from Login.username().type('Hello World')
},
});
```
The next step is to add the `Login` page to the exported const `Pages` in `packages/grafana-e2e/src/pages/index.ts` so that it appears when we type `e2e.pages` in our IDE.
```ecmascript 6
export const Pages = {
Login,
...,
...,
...,
};
```
Now that we have a `Page` called `Login` in our `Pages` const we can use that to add a selector in our html like shown below and now this really signals to future developers that it is part of an e2e test.
The last step in our example is to use our `Login` page as part of a test. The `pageFactory` function we used before gives us two things:
- The `url` property is used whenever we call the `visit` function and is equivalent to the Cypress function [cy.visit()](https://docs.cypress.io/api/commands/visit.html#Syntax).
> Best practice after calling `visit` is to always call `should` on a selector to prevent flaky tests when you try to access an element that isn't ready. For more information, refer to [Commands vs. assertions](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/core-concepts/retry-ability.html#Commands-vs-assertions).
- Any defined selector in the `selectors` property can be accessed from the `Login` page by invoking it. This is equivalent to the result of the Cypress function [cy.get(...)](https://docs.cypress.io/api/commands/get.html#Syntax).
Let's take a look at an example that uses the same `selector` for multiple items in a list for instance. In this example app we have a list of data sources that we want to click on during an e2e test.
Just as before in the basic example we'll start by creating a page abstraction using the `pageFactory` function:
```typescript
export const DataSources = pageFactory({
url: '/datasources',
selectors: {
dataSources: (dataSourceName: string) => `Data source list item ${dataSourceName}`,
},
});
```
You might have noticed that instead of a simple `string` as the `selector`, we're using a `function` that takes a string parameter as an argument and returns a formatted string using the argument.
Just as before we need to add the `DataSources` page to the exported const `Pages` in `packages/grafana-e2e/src/pages/index.ts`.
The next step is to use the `dataSources` selector function as in our example below:
Now we can write our test. The one thing that differs from the `Basic example` is that we pass in which data source we want to click on as an argument to the selector function:
> Best practice after calling `visit` is to always call `should` on a selector to prevent flaky tests when you try to access an element that isn't ready. For more information, refer to [Commands vs. assertions](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/core-concepts/retry-ability.html#Commands-vs-assertions).
