Difference between webdriver.get() and webdriver.navigate()

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 rea

Answer 1

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 2

Both perform the same function but driver.get(); seems more popular. driver.navigate().to(); is best used when you are already in the middle of a script and you want to redirect from current URL to a new one. For the sake of differentiating your codes, you can use driver.get();to launch the first URL after opening a browser instance, albeit both will work either way.

Answer 3

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 4

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 5

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

Answer 6

driver.get() : It's used to go to the particular website , But it doesn't maintain the browser History and cookies so , we can't use forward and backward button , if we click on that , page will not get schedule

driver.navigate() : it's used to go to the particular website , but it maintains the browser history and cookies, so we can use forward and backward button to navigate between the pages during the coding of Testcase