Watir : Methods supported by Element

Methods Supported by Element

The HTML Elements that are currently supported include:

button	<input> tags with type=button, submit, image or reset
radio	<input> tags with the type=radio; known as radio buttons
check_box	<input> tags with type=checkbox
text_field	<input> tags with the type=text (single-line), type=textarea (multi-line), and type=password
hidden	<input> tags with type=hidden
select_list	<select> tags, known as drop-downs or drop-down lists
label	<label> tags (including "for" attribute)
span	<span> tags
div	<div> tags
p	<p> (paragraph) tags
link	<a> (anchor) tags
table	<table> tags, including row and cell methods for accessing nested elements
image	<img> tags
form	<form> tags
frame	frames, including both the <frame> elements and the corresponding pages
map	<map> tags
area	<area> tags
li	<li> tags
h1 - h6	<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6> tags

The ways ("How"s) that are available to identify an html object depend upon the object type, but include:

:id	Used to find an element that has an "id=" attribute. Since each id should be unique, according to the XHTML specification, this is recommended as the most reliable method to find an object. *
:name	Used to find an element that has a "name=" attribute. This is useful for older versions of HTML, but "name" is deprecated in XHTML. *
:value	Used to find a text field with a given default value, or a button with a given caption, or a text field
:text	Used for links, spans, divs and other element that contain text.
:index	Used to find the nth element of the specified type on a page. For example, button(:index, 2) finds the second button. Current versions of WATIR use 1-based indexing, but future versions will use 0-based indexing.
:class	Used for an element that has a "class=" attribute.
:title	Used for an element that has a "title=" attribute.
:xpath	Finds the item using xpath query.
:method	Used only for forms, the method attribute of a form is either GET or POST.
:action	Used only for form elements, specifies the URL where the form is to be submitted.
:href	Used to identify a link by its "href=" attribute.
:src	Used to identify an image by its URL.

* :id and :name are the quickest of these to process, and so should be used when possible to speed up scripts.

Supported Methods by Element

	:id	:name	:value	:text	:caption	:index	:class	:xpath	:title	:method	:action	:href	:src	:for	multiple attribute support?
button
radio
check_box
text_field
hidden
select_list
label
span
div
p
link
table
image
form
frame
map
area
li
h1 - h6