by Larry Van Sickle, Senior Software Engineer
Protractor and Selenium are widely used tools for building functional end-to-end (e2e) automated tests. These tests execute a web-based application under test through a browser interface. The automated tests need to examine web page elements to determine whether their contents match expected results. They also need to operate on a webpage’s elements to drive the application. The tests need to click buttons, select from menus, and enter text in fields as part of the automated tests. A key problem and design decision is how the automated tests will locate elements in the DOM.