Difference between webdriver.get() and webdriver.n

Question

What is the difference between get() and navigate() methods? Does any of this or maybe another method waits for page content to load? What do I really need is something like Selenium 1.0's WaitForPageToLoad but for using via webdriver.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Not sure it applies here also but in the case of protractor when using navigate().to(...) the history is being kept but when using get() it is lost.

One of my test was failing because I was using get() 2 times in a row and then doing a navigate().back(). Because the history was lost, when going back it went to the about page and an error was thrown:

Error: Error while waiting for Protractor to sync with the page: {}

Answer 2

Navigating

The first thing you’ll want to do with WebDriver is navigate to a page. The normal way to do this is by calling get:

driver.get("http://www.google.com");

WebDriver will wait until the page has fully loaded (that is, the onload event has fired) before returning control to your test or script. It’s worth noting that if your page uses a lot of AJAX on load then WebDriver may not know when it has completely loaded. If you need to ensure such pages are fully loaded then you can use waits.

Navigation: History and Location

Earlier, we covered navigating to a page using the get command (driver.get("http://www.example.com")) As you’ve seen, WebDriver has a number of smaller, task-focused interfaces, and navigation is a useful task. Because loading a page is such a fundamental requirement, the method to do this lives on the main WebDriver interface, but it’s simply a synonym to:

driver.navigate().to("http://www.example.com");

To reiterate: navigate().to() and get() do exactly the same thing. One's just a lot easier to type than the other!

The navigate interface also exposes the ability to move backwards and forwards in your browser’s history:

driver.navigate().forward();
driver.navigate().back();

_{(Emphasis added)}

Answer 3

For what it's worth, from my IE9 testing, it looks like there's a difference for URLs that contain a hashbang (a single page app, in my case):

http://www.example.com#page

The driver.get("http://www.example.com#anotherpage") method is handled by the browser as a fragment identifier and JavaScript variables are retained from the previous URL.

While, the navigate().to("http://www.example.com#anotherpage") method is handled by the browser as a address/location/URL bar input and JavaScript variables are not retained from the previous URL.

Answer 4

driver.get() is used to navigate particular URL(website) and wait till page load.

driver.navigate() is used to navigate to particular URL and does not wait to page load. It maintains browser history or cookies to navigate back or forward.

Answer 5

CASE-1

In the below code I navigated to 3 different URLs and when the execution comes to navigate command, it navigated back to facebook home page.

public class FirefoxInvoke {
                @Test
                public static void browserInvoke()
                {
                    System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "gecko-driver-path");
                WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
                System.out.println("Before"+driver.getTitle());
                driver.get("http://www.google.com");
                driver.get("http://www.facebook.com");
                driver.get("http://www.india.com");
                driver.navigate().back();
                driver.quit();
                }

                public static void main(String[] args) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            browserInvoke();
                }

            }

CASE-2:

In below code, I have used navigate() instead of get(), but both the snippets(Case-1 and Case-2) are working exactly the same, just the case-2 execution time is less than of case-1

public class FirefoxInvoke {
                @Test
                public static void browserInvoke()
                {
                    System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "gecko-driver-path");
                WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
                System.out.println("Before"+driver.getTitle());
                driver.navigate().to("http://www.google.com");
                driver.navigate().to("http://www.facebook.com");
                driver.navigate().to("http://www.india.com");
                driver.navigate().back();
                driver.quit();
                }

                public static void main(String[] args) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            browserInvoke();
                }

            }

• So the main difference between get() and navigate() is, both are performing the same task but with the use of navigate() you can move back() or forward() in your session's history.
• navigate() is faster than get() because navigate() does not wait for the page to load fully or completely.

Answer 6

They both seems to navigate to the given webpage and quoting @matt answer:

navigate().to() and get() do exactly the same thing.

Single-Page Applications are an exception to this.

The difference between these two methods comes not from their behavior, but from the behavior in the way the application works and how browser deal with it.

navigate().to() navigates to the page by changing the URL like doing forward/backward navigation.

Whereas, get() refreshes the page to changing the URL.

So, in cases where application domain changes, both the method behaves similarly. That is, page is refreshed in both the cases. But, in single-page applications, while navigate().to() do not refreshes the page, get() do.

Moreover, this is the reason browser history is getting lost when get() is used due to application being refreshed.

Originally answered: https://stackoverflow.com/a/33868976/3619412