What is the difference between a CSS selector and XPath? And which is better with respect to performance for cross-browser testing?

by

CSS selectors perform far better than Xpath and it is well documented in Selenium community. Here are some reasons,

  • Xpath engines are different in each browser, hence make them inconsistent
  • IE does not have a native xpath engine, therefore selenium injects its own xpath engine for compatibility of its API. Hence we lose the advantage of using native browser features that WebDriver inherently promotes.
  • Xpath tend to become complex and hence make hard to read in my opinion

However there are some situations where, you need to use xpath, for example, searching for a parent element or searching element by its text (I wouldn’t recommend the later).

You can read blog from Simon here . He also recommends CSS over Xpath.

If you are testing content then do not use selectors that are dependent on the content of the elements. That will be a maintenance nightmare for every locale. Try talking with developers and use techniques that they used to externalize the text in the application, like dictionaries or resource bundles etc. Here is my blog that explains it in detail.

edit 1

Thanks to @parishodak, here is the link which provides the numbers proving that CSS performance is better

More Related Contents:

  1. What is the difference between cssSelector & Xpath and which is better with respect to performance for cross browser testing?
  2. What is the difference between a CSS and XPath selector? And which is better with respect to performance for cross-browser testing?
  3. NoSuchElementException, Selenium unable to locate element
  4. Need to find element in selenium by css
  5. I need to find an element in Selenium by CSS
  6. Locating an element by id
  7. What is the difference between WebDriver and WebElement in Selenium?
  8. selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element while trying to click Next button with selenium
  9. How does chrome driver interact with Chrome browser?
  10. Can Selenium interact with an existing browser session?
  11. How to click on SVG elements using XPath and Selenium WebDriver through Java
  12. How to inspect element for Selenium v3.6 as FireBug is not an option any more for FF 56?
  13. Is there a version of Selenium WebDriver that is not detectable?
  14. Page load strategy for Chrome driver (Updated till Selenium v3.12.0)
  15. Unable to find a matching set of capabilities with selenium 3.4.3, firefox 54.0 and gecko driver 0.17
  16. Many process of Google Chrome (32 bit)
  17. Refreshing Web Page By WebDriver When Waiting For Specific Condition
  18. Selenium and non-headless browser keeps asking for Captcha
  19. What is the internal working difference between Implicit Wait and Explicit Wait
  20. ERROR:ssl_client_socket_openssl.cc(1158)] handshake failed with ChromeDriver Chrome browser and Selenium
  21. Why XPath does not highlighted the yellow mark in Chrome84?
  22. What is the exact purpose of Selenium Grid?
  23. Cannot get automation extension from timeout: Timed out receiving message from renderer
  24. How do you click on a checkbox from a list of checkboxes via Selenium/Webdriver in Java?
  25. How to find element by part of its id name in selenium with python
  26. Using an OR condition in Xpath to identify the same element
  27. Is there a Selenium WebDriver available for the Microsoft Edge browser?
  28. Selenium xpath selector based on the element text
  29. Handle windows authentication pop up on Chrome
  30. selenium implicitly wait doesn’t work

Leave a Comment