How to handle multiple windows in Selenium Web driver

In automation, when we have multiple windows in any web application, the activity may need to switch control among several windows from one to other in order to complete the operation. After completion of the operation, it has to return to the main window i.e. parent window.

To uniquely identify an opened browser Selenium WebDriver keeps a map of Opened windows VS Window Handle. Window handle is a unique string value that uniquely identifies a Browser window on desktop. Each browser will have a unique window handle. To get Window handle WebDriver provides two methods.

current_window_handle and window_handles 

current_window_handle: This method return a string value and it returns the Window handle of currently focused browser window. 

Window_handles: This method returns a set of all Window handles of all the browsers that were opened by the web driver. 

Sceanrio 1:

Open Chrome browser

Navigate to the http://trendnxt.blogspot.com/ application

Get current window handle and print it to console

Script: 

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
import time
chromePath="C:\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe"
driver=webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromePath)
driver.get("http://trendnxt.blogspot.com/p/selenuim.html")

# below is the method for get the current window handle ID

ParentWindow=driver.current_window_handle

print("Patnet window Id : ",ParentWindow)

Sceanrio 2:

Open Chrome browser

Navigate to the http://trendnxt.blogspot.com/ application

Get current window handle and print it to console

Locate ‘Brief On Selenium Grid’ Link using XPath

Click on Link , it will open the new window

Get the window handles of both the open windows

Loop through both handles

Switch to the new window with the handle’s reference

Get the title and print it to console

Close the new window

Switch the control back to parent window and print the title of the parent window to the console 

Script: 

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
import time
chromePath="C:\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe"
driver=webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromePath)
driver.get("http://trendnxt.blogspot.com/p/selenuim.html") 

ParentWindow=driver.current_window_handle
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//a[contains(@href,'brief-selenium-grid')]").click()
print("Patnet window Id : ",ParentWindow)

windowHandleList=[]
windowHandleList=driver.window_handles
for windowhandle in windowHandleList:
    if windowhandle != ParentWindow:
        driver.switch_to.window(windowhandle)
        childwindwtitle=driver.title
        print(childwindwtitle)
        driver.close()
        driver.switch_to.window(ParentWindow)
        parentwinddowtitle=driver.title
        print(parentwinddowtitle)

In above script we are using List because we need collect opened window handle id.

I used ‘for’ loop and ‘if’ condition because I want to switch over to child window, so we need to compare with parentwindowHandleID.

By default the focus is always on the Parent window, In order to shift focus from Parent Window to any child window we have to use the following command on WebDriver – driver.switch_to.window(windowhandle).

you can use all web driver command on child window once you switch over to child window.

Note: without switching to the child window we will not be able to perform any action on that window and you will get “selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchWindowException”.

After closing a Child window you have to explicitly switch to Parent window before sending in any WebDriver commands.

In the above code we will close the Child window and then explicitly w

Switch to the parent window. 

Scenario 3:

Open Chrome browser

Navigate to the http://trendnxt.blogspot.com/ application

Get current window handle and print it to console

Locate ‘Brief On Selenium Grid’ Link using XPath

Click on Link , it will open the new window

Get the window handles of both the open windows

Loop through both handles

Switch to the new window with the handle’s reference

Get the title and print it to console

Don’t close child window.

Switch the control back to parent window and print the URL to the console.

Close all open browsers

Script: 

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
import time
chromePath="C:\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe"
driver=webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromePath)
driver.get("http://trendnxt.blogspot.com/p/selenuim.html") 

ParentWindow=driver.current_window_handle
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//a[contains(@href,'brief-selenium-grid')]").click()
print("Patnet window Id : ",ParentWindow)

windowHandleList=[]
windowHandleList=driver.window_handles
for windowhandle in windowHandleList:
    if windowhandle != ParentWindow:
        driver.switch_to.window(windowhandle)
        childwindwtitle=driver.title
        print(childwindwtitle)
        driver.switch_to.window(ParentWindow)
        parentwinddowtitle=driver.title
        print(parentwinddowtitle)

# close all open browsers

driver.quit()

driver.quit(): will close all the windows opened by the web driver. This command shuts down the driver instance and any further commands to WebDriver results in exception. 

Note: without switching to the any window(other than parent) we will not be able to perform any action on that window and you will get “selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchWindowException”.