How to use xpath in Selenium RC with JavaScript?

Question

I am using Selenium RC with IE 6 and XPath locators are terribly slow. So I am trying to see if javascript-xpath actually speeds up things.

But could not find enough/clear documentation on how to use native x- path libraries.

I am doing the following:

protected void startSelenium (String testServer, String appName, String testInBrowser){
    selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*" +testInBrowser, testServer+ "/"+ appName + "/");
    echo("selenium instance created:"+selenium.getClass());
    selenium.start();
    echo("selenium instance started..." + testServer + "/" + appName +"/");

    selenium.runScript("lib/javascript-xpath-latest-cmp.js");
    selenium.useXpathLibrary("javascript-xpath");
    selenium.allowNativeXpath("true");
}

This results in speed improvement of XPath locator but the improvements are not consistent. On some runs the time taken for a locator is halved; while sometimes its randomly high.

Am I missing any configuration step here? Would be great if someone who has had success with this could share their views and approach.

Thanks, Nirmal

Solution:

protected void startSelenium (String testServer, String appName, String testInBrowser){
    selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*" +testInBrowser, testServer+ "/"+ appName + "/");
    echo("selenium instance created:"+selenium.getClass());
    selenium.start();
    echo("selenium instance started..." + testServer + "/" + appName +"/");

    selenium.useXpathLibrary("javascript-xpath");
}

Answer 1

I implemented this myself and I only had to do selenium.useXpathLibrary("javascript-xpath"). In my tests, the javascript xpath was about 7x faster on IE 8. Haven't really tested on anything else, but we only use it for IE.