Question

In the project on which I add tests, I have some elements complicated to “get”.
The html of my textarea :

<div class="quote">        
 <div class="clearfix">          
  <div class="icon"></div>            
   <div class="text">
    <span class="yui3-widget yui3-inputwidget yui3-textareawidget yui3-textareawidget-focused" style="">
     <span class="yui3-textareawidget-content">
      <textarea name="" placeholder=""></textarea>
     </span>
    </span>
   </div>        
   <div class="author">
    (...) other text_field 
   </div>
  </div>        
 </div>    
</div>

For the moment, I use this line to set value

@browser.element(:css => ".quote textarea").send_keys "test"

In PageObject, I should declare the element and use it :

# declaration at the top
element(:quote_text, :css => ".quote textarea") 
# use it where I need
self.quote_text = "text"

But I get this error when I use :

undefined method `quote_text=' for #<PublishPage:0x33843c0> (NoMethodError)

Where am I wrong ?

Answer 1

When you do element(:quote_text, :css => ".quote textarea"), it will only generate the methods (see doc):

quote_text #Returns the text of the element
quote_text_element #Returns the element
quote_text? #Returns if the element exists

Since you know it is a text area and want the text area methods, you should declare it as:

text_area(:quote_text, :css => ".quote textarea") 

This will give you the quote_text= method you expect (see doc).

Update – Since Watir-Webdriver only support css-selectors at the element class (see Issue 124), you will also need to change the locator. Two alternative declarations for quote_text that seem to work:

#Using a block to locate the element:
text_area(:quote_text){ div_element(:class => "quote").text_area_element }

#Using xpath:
text_area(:quote_text, :xpath => '//div[@class="quote"]//textarea')