HOW TO HANDLE THE WEB ELEMENTS WITH COMMON LOCATORS OR WHEN IDS ARE SAME FOR ALL WEB ELEMENTS?

Let us consider a scenario, there are 4 login buttons on page
with same id or ids are changing dynamically.

For the above scenario HTML code should be like this:

<input type="submit" id="button" value="Login" />
<input type="submit" id="button" value="Login" />
<input type="submit" id="button" value="Login" />
<input type="submit" id="button" value="Login" />

We need to use xpath as

//input[@id='button'][1]

for first login button and

//input[@id='button'][2]

for second login button.
Similarly for other login buttons.


We can also take same scenario in other way like there are all fields with common locators.

Locator for login is

id=user

for password is

id=pass

and for submit is

id=login

For the above scenario HTML code should be like this:

<div class="col1 left">
<FORM action="home.php" method="post">
<LABEL for="Username">Username </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="user"><BR />
<LABEL for="Password">Password </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="pass"><BR />
<INPUT type="submit" value="login" id=login>
</FORM>
</div>
<div class="col1 right">
<FORM action="home.php" method="post">
<LABEL for="Username">Username </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="user"><BR />
<LABEL for="Password">Password </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="pass"><BR />
<INPUT type="submit" value="login" id=login>
</FORM>
</div>
<div class="col2 left">
<FORM action="home.php" method="post">
<LABEL for="Username">Username </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="user"><BR />
<LABEL for="Password">Password </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="pass"><BR />
<INPUT type="submit" value="login" id=login>
</FORM>
</div>
<div class="col2 right">
<FORM action="home.php" method="post">
<LABEL for="Username">Username </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="user"><BR />
<LABEL for="Password">Password </LABEL>
<INPUT type="text" id="pass"><BR />
<INPUT type="submit" value="login" id=login>
</FORM>
</div>

We need to use xpath as

//input[@id='user'][1]

for first username,

//input[@id='user'][2]

for second username.

Similarly for other elements like password & login button.