How To Find Broken Links Using Selenium Tool

Links that are not working are broken links. For example, a valid URL navigates to the desired page, whereas a broken URL navigates to an unwanted web page/errored-out pages like 400- bad request, 500-server error, or 404-page not found.

When a user takes any click actions on a web page containing links/ Hyperlinks, it will navigate to the target link/target URL of the web page. This target link should be in working status and be a valid link containing the desired information.
These Hyperlinks are nothing but HTML elements on web applications/pages that try to redirect to another web page upon user actions.

2(a) How to locate links in Selenium WebDriver?

Links in Selenium Web driver can be located by using CSS Selectors, Xpath, Name, Class Name and by ID.
Along with those, Selenium provides specific locators for hyperlinks ie, ‘partialLinkText() and linkText()’.
Ex: drvr.findElement(By.linkText(“SignIn”)).click();
drvr.findElement(By.partialLinkText(“Sign”)).click();
for example HTML using anchor tag <a> :
<a href=”SignIn.html”>SignIn</a>

2(b) Examples in Java, to locate link using exact visible text Name, by ID, ClassName , Xpath and CSSslector are shown below:

WebDriver driver1 = new ChromeDriver();
driver1.findElement(By.linkText(“SignIn”)).click();
driver1.findElement(By.id(“signinLink”)).click();
driver1.findElement(By.className(“menu-link”).click();
driver1.findElement(By.xpath(“//a[text()=’SignIn’]”).click();
driver1.findElement(By.cssSelector(“a[href=’signin.html’]”)).click();

When the images on the web application don’t open up/shown up properly and show an error message like failed to load the desired image,” it means that the image file uploaded is corrupt or that the image could be missing on the specified path, and other reason for a broken image could be that its not compatible with the browser specified and is corrupt at the file location itself.

A ‘Broken Image’ is provided as a link on a web page and is not working.

3(a) How to find a broken image in Selenium?

In Selenium, to find all of the broken images, Selenium cannot directly find them as broken image. Hence, the following approaches are helpful:
i) Get the URLs source- ‘src’ attribute
ii) By sending HTTTP requests
iii) Get all image elements by using ‘<image>’
iv) Verifying the status codes in responses
i.e. Firstly locate all the <img> elements then retrieve all image URLs from src attribute, then send HTTP request by using ‘HttpURLConnection’ class and lastly validate that the response code is 4XX or 5XX i.e 404. 500 gives the broken images or confirms that the image is broken.

An illustration sample is shown in the code snippet.
For Example: (in Java)

<<import required org.openqa.selenium packages + HTTP URL Connect, java.net.URL, Java.util.List >>
//org.openqa.selenium.;
//org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
//org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
//.ChromeDriver;
 
//.HttpURLConnection;
//.URL;
//java.util.List;

public class FindBrokenImagesCheck {

public static void main(String) {
WebDriver drv1 = new ChromeDriver();
try {
drv1.get(“https://examplesite.com”);

// Finding out all of the image elements
List<WebElement> images1 = drv1.findElements(By.tagName(“imge”));

System.out.println(“Total size of images is = ” + images1.size());

for (WebElement image : images)
{
String imglink = image.getAttribute( src);

try {
URL url1 = new URL(imglink;
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url1.openConnection();
connection.setRequestMethod(“GET”);
connection.connect();

int statusCode = connection.getResponseCode();

if (statusCode >= 400) {
System.out.println(imglink );
} else {
System.out.println(imglink);
}

} catch (Exception) {
System.out.println(imglink);
}
}
}

drv1.quit();

}
}

In Web application page testing, the links are categorised in 4 types, such as Internal links, external links, broken links, and image links. These links are to be validated during web application testing.
Each of the link’s Examples goes like this:
Internal Links: To navigate within the same website, https://www.examplesite.com /Home
External Links: Will navigate to another link, for example, https://accounts.google.com/
Broken Links: Points to pages that do not exist. https://sampleurl.com/pagenotfound
Image links: Actionable/ can click hyperlink is img source.
<a href=”sitehome.html”>
<img src=”logofile.png”>

Usage of the <a> tag and the findElements() method, we can retrieve all the hyperlinks on the webpages.
For Example:
List<WebElement> links1 = dvr1.findElements(By.tagName(“a”));
System.out.println(“Total Links size is= ” + links1.size());

These 2 links are specifically used for identifying hyperlinks on the webpage in Selenium, called Selenium Locators.
linkText() – Is for identifying the links by exact match of text/visible text, which is more precise and is faster when an exact match of text is known, while
partialLinkText () – Is for identifying the links by partial/portion of text/visible text, which can be flexible and is beneficial when lengthy text is involved.

By using the ‘DevTools’ on the web page/browser, you need to inspect first before automating the hyperlinks. Ie, to inspect a link:
i) Go to the web application page and right-click on the desired link
ii) Choose Inspect
iii) Look for the HTML elements
iv) Examine the attributes like ID, Name, Href, XPath/CSS locator, LinkText, Class.
Examples are shown in the above FAQs-2(a)’s section.

Hyperlinks are denoted using <a>=anchor tag in Selenium.  So, locate  <a> tag elements by making use of ‘findElements()’  method, then use the ‘size()’ method.
// org.openqa.selenium.;
// org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
// org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
// ChromeDriver;
 
// java.util.List;
<<import required org.openqa.selenium packages + HTTP URL Connect, java.net.URL, Java.util.List >>
 
public class CountAllLinks {
    public static void main (String[]) {
 
        WebDriver drivr1 = new ChromeDriver();
 
        drivr1.get(“https://www.examplesite.com”);
 
        // Finding  all links on the web application page
//findElements() is for returning back a List of WebElements and it is assigned to the variable “values” whose type is List<WebElement>
 
        List<WebElement> links1 = drivr1.findElements(By.tagName(“a”));
 
        // To Print link’s total number of links
        System.out.println(links1.size());
 
        drivr1.quit();
    }
}
Sample Practice code snippet or example can be referred in this video to find the total number of links present on the web page application

Links that are navigating to errored out page could be a server error, a corrupted file uploaded, or its location path, or it might have been deleted, incorrect target url in the main URL. All of these reasons will lead to a bad user experience, and SEO ratings go down, making the overall reputation of the web application look not so great.
Hence, it is very much essential to catch/ identify these types of errors during Selenium Automation testing.
Selenium WebDriver (using Java language) has the capability to handle incorrect URLs and Image URLs, modified image files, any typos, and network errors if any, during the automation test creation. For example, an HTTP Request (using the HTTP GET request method) can be sent using ‘HttpURLConnection’, check for the server response code returned, whether its 200(OK). Anything else apart from this status code can be considered broken link.
For broken image elements in Selenium, you need to extract the ‘src’ attribute of the image by looping through each image for that target URL.

There may be a couple of main reasons for broken links occurrences, such as:
1. Typing mistakes may happen by the developers/ programmers whenever 2 linked web pages are connected.
2. Sometimes, it is likely that the target webpage may get deleted during some modifications to the website.
3. It can also happen that the main reason is an error in the main code itself. Say, for example, whenever developers try to copy the same links to certain webpages, there is likely a mistake here.
4. The file format may get modified during clicks on the links, ie user can download specific files upon clicks, which may require modification; hence, during these modifications, the format of the files may be changed, creating a disconnect with the code.
5. There can also be modifications to websites or linked webpages during the renaming of the webpages, which can also lead to breaking the connectivity with the existing webpage and land on a broken linked page.
6. In rare cases, broken link issues can happen with the faulty website link received from the provider, and are not necessarily the mistake of the developer nor the company.