$

The $ command is a short way to call the findElement command in order to fetch a single element on the page. It returns an object that with an extended prototype to call action commands without passing in a selector. However if you still pass in a selector it will look for that element first and call the action on that element. You can also pass in an object as selector where the object contains a property element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf with the value of a reference to an element. The command will then transform the reference to an extended WebdriverIO element.

Using the wdio testrunner this command is a global variable else it will be located on the browser object instead.

You can chain $ or $$ together in order to walk down the DOM tree.

info

For more information on how to select specific elements, check out the Selectors guide.

Usage

browser.$(selector)

Parameters

Name	Type	Details
selector	String, Function, Object	selector or JS Function to fetch a certain element

Examples

index.html

<ul id="menu">

<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>

<li><a href="/">Developer Guide</a></li>

<li><a href="/">API</a></li>

<li><a href="/">Contribute</a></li>

</ul>

$.js

it('should get text a menu link', () => {

const text = $('#menu');

console.log(text.$$('li')[2].$('a').getText()); // outputs: "API"

});

it('should get text a menu link - JS Function', () => {

const text = $(function() { // Arrow function is not allowed here.

// this is Window https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window

// TypeScript users may do something like this

// return (this as Window).document.querySelector('#menu')

return this.document.querySelector('#menu'); // Element

});

console.log(text.$$('li')[2].$('a').getText()); // outputs: "API"

});

it('should allow to convert protocol result of an element into a WebdriverIO element', () => {

const activeElement = browser.getActiveElement();

console.log($(activeElement).getTagName()); // outputs active element

});