PageObject issues

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The PageObject pattern is a great move forward to disentangle the DOM structure internals from the functional web application tests. Most examples provided on the web solve only one problem where there are a number to be solved.

Lets start by looking at the summary of the PageObject pattern principles from the SeleniumHQ wiki (emphasis mine):

The public methods represent the services that the page offers
Try not to expose the internals of the page
Generally don’t make assertions
Methods return other PageObjects
Need not represent an entire page
Different results for the same action are modelled as different methods

The principles above are employed to serve the design goal:

Within your web app’s UI there are areas that your tests interact with. A Page Object simply models these as objects within the test code. This reduces the amount of duplicated code and means that if the UI changes, the fix need only be applied in one place.

In summary: changes to the DOM internals (“page internals” above) should impact only a few (preferrably a single) page object’s implementation.

All examples around the web show page objects as modelling entire pages. Although that works for simple pages which only use strict HTML tags, this becomes a problem when an application is implemented as Single Page Application (SPA) or when a page uses a widget framework such as quasar framework or DojoToolkit. As widgets from those toolkits often require specific code for finding the DOM root and interaction, employing an entire-page page object pattern introduces code duplication again.

Using the italics marked principle, these widgets can be abstracted into their own page objects. When separating the design like this, the services of the widgets (i.e. selecting an option, in case of a SELECT widget) won’t be implemented repeatedly in every page object using the widget. The principle Need not represent an entire page will likely then become Most often will represent part of a page.

There is a contradiction in the two bold-faced principles: a page object should not be exposing its internals, yet other page objects should be able to locate page objects on the page and create instances for those page objects.