Custom annotation creation initialization issue with Serenity Framework

Question

Problem Description: Need to create custom annotation which creates takes string as argument and process it and return Weblement in serenity Framework. I have tried the code through custom annotations + google inject but could not initialize my page during runtime serenity. Can somebod provide some guidance on the same?

Code:

HomePage Class

public class Homepage {
    @FindBy(css = ".sbibod")
    public SearchForm searchForm; 

@AutoxpathAnnotation(ValuesPair = ".sbibod")
public WebElement searchForm2;

Annotation Interface

//import net.serenitybdd.core.annotations.findby.How;

@Documented
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.FIELD)

public @interface AutoxpathAnnotation {


          String[] ValuesPair() default {"{Customer Service Name2}"};

}

Proceess Implementations

        Class c = obj.getClass(); 
// Here need to Pass HomePage Object, Don't Know How to Pass through Page Object Model. Also need to know where this function needs to be written.

        @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
        Annotation an = c.getAnnotation(AutoxpathAnnotation.class);
        AutoxpathAnnotation ref = (AutoxpathAnnotation)an;
        xapthform = "//label[contains(text(),'"+VisibleText+"')]/../following-sibling::*/select";

            //Input will Handle Checkbox, Button and radioBox
        if (type.equals("input")) {
            xapthform = "//label[contains(text(),'"+VisibleText+"')]/../following-sibling::*/input";

        if (type.equals("textarea")) {
            xapthform = "//label[contains(text(),'"+VisibleText+"')]/../following-sibling::*/textarea";
        } 

        System.out.println("Searching values on the Screen: ");
        System.out.println("------------------------------------------------------");

        return (WebElement) getDriver().findElement(By.xpath(xapthform));

I have reffered some documentation which uses injection-using-guice

public class DriverModule extends AbstractModule implements MethodInterceptor {
    @Inject
    private WebDriver driver;

    private static Injector injector;


    @Override
    protected void configure() {
        bind(WebDriver.class)
            .toProvider(WebDriverProvider.class)
            .in(Singleton.class);

    //Todo some Operation

    }       

    But not sure how it will work exactly in RunTime.

Answer 1

Custom annotations are not that easy to inject into existing frameworks. You could use the @WhenPageOpens annotation on your page object to do whatever custom setup you need to do, e.g.

@WhenPageOpens
public void injectCustomFields() {
    InitialiseAutoxpathFields.in(this);
} 

(where the InitialiseAutoxpathFields is a class you write to do your custom annotation processing).

Answer 2

I added this PR https://github.com/serenity-bdd/serenity-core/pull/1048 to implement your custom annotations in Serenity.

Adding an implementation of this new interface CustomFindByAnnotationService and implementing the org.openqa.selenium.By Like in this example:

public class ByReact extends By {

private static final char DOUBLE_QUOTE = '"';
private static final String SINGLE_QUOTE = "'";

private final String reactSelector;

public ByReact(String reactSelector){
    this.reactSelector = reactSelector;
}

@Override
public WebElement findElement(SearchContext context) {
    String jquery = "return __retractor(" + quoted(reactSelector) + ")[0];";
    return (WebElement) ((JavascriptExecutor) context).executeScript(jquery);
}

@Override
public List<WebElement> findElements(SearchContext context) {
    String jquery = "return __retractor(" + quoted(reactSelector) + ");";
    return (List<WebElement>) ((JavascriptExecutor) context).executeScript(jquery);
}

private String quoted(final String reactSelector) {
    if (reactSelector.contains("'")) {
        return DOUBLE_QUOTE + reactSelector + '"';
    } else {
        return  "'" + reactSelector + SINGLE_QUOTE;
    }
}

public String toString() {
    return "By.ByReact: " + reactSelector;
}

}