How To Find Broken Links Using Selenium WebDriver

Find Broken Links Using Selenium WebDriver:

One of the key test case is to find broken links on a webpage. Due to existence of broken links, your website reputation gets damaged and there will be a negative impact on your business. It’s mandatory to find and fix all the broken links before release. If a link is not working, we face a message as 404 Page Not Found.

Let’s see some of the HTTP status codes.

200 – Valid Link

404 – Link not found

400 – Bad request

401 – Unauthorized

500 – Internal Error

Consider a test case to test all the links in the home page of “SoftwareTestingMaterial.com”

Below code fetches all the links of a given website (i.e., SoftwareTestingMaterial.com) using WebDriver commands and reads the status of each href link with the help of HttpURLConnection class.

Click here for more information on HttpURLConnection

Given clear explanation in the comments section with in the program itself. Please go through it to understand the flow.

package softwareTestingMaterial;

import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
 
public class BrokenLinks {
	public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
		//Instantiating FirefoxDriver
		System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "D:\\Selenium Environment\\Drivers\\geckodriver.exe");
		WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
		//Maximize the browser
		driver.manage().window().maximize();
		//Implicit wait for 10 seconds
		driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
		//To launch softwaretestingmaterial.com
		driver.get("https://www.softwaretestingmaterial.com");
		//Wait for 5 seconds
		Thread.sleep(5000);
		//Used tagName method to collect the list of items with tagName "a"
		//findElements - to find all the elements with in the current page. It returns a list of all webelements or an empty list if nothing matches
		List<WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));	
		//To print the total number of links
		System.out.println("Total links are "+links.size());	
		//used for loop to 
		for(int i=0; i<links.size(); i++) {
			WebElement element = links.get(i);
			//By using "href" attribute, we could get the url of the requried link
			String url=element.getAttribute("href");
			//calling verifyLink() method here. Passing the parameter as url which we collected in the above link
			//See the detailed functionality of the verifyLink(url) method below
			verifyLink(url);			
		}	
	}
	
	// The below function verifyLink(String urlLink) verifies any broken links and return the server status. 
	public static void verifyLink(String urlLink) {
        //Sometimes we may face exception "java.net.MalformedURLException". Keep the code in try catch block to continue the broken link analysis
        try {
			//Use URL Class - Create object of the URL Class and pass the urlLink as parameter 
			URL link = new URL(urlLink);
			// Create a connection using URL object (i.e., link)
			HttpURLConnection httpConn =(HttpURLConnection)link.openConnection();
			//Set the timeout for 2 seconds
			httpConn.setConnectTimeout(2000);
			//connect using connect method
			httpConn.connect();
			//use getResponseCode() to get the response code. 
				if(httpConn.getResponseCode()== 200) {	
					System.out.println(urlLink+" - "+httpConn.getResponseMessage());
				}
				if(httpConn.getResponseCode()== 404) {
					System.out.println(urlLink+" - "+httpConn.getResponseMessage());
				}
			}
			//getResponseCode method returns = IOException - if an error occurred connecting to the server. 
		catch (Exception e) {
			//e.printStackTrace();
		}
    } 
}

package softwareTestingMaterial;

import java.net.HttpURLConnection;

import java.net.URL;

import java.util.List;

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;

import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class BrokenLinks {

public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {

//Instantiating FirefoxDriver

System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "D:\\Selenium Environment\\Drivers\\geckodriver.exe");

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

//Maximize the browser

driver.manage().window().maximize();

//Implicit wait for 10 seconds

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

//To launch softwaretestingmaterial.com

driver.get("https://www.softwaretestingmaterial.com");

//Wait for 5 seconds

Thread.sleep(5000);

//Used tagName method to collect the list of items with tagName "a"

//findElements - to find all the elements with in the current page. It returns a list of all webelements or an empty list if nothing matches

List<WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));

//To print the total number of links

System.out.println("Total links are "+links.size());

//used for loop to

for(int i=0; i<links.size(); i++) {

WebElement element = links.get(i);

//By using "href" attribute, we could get the url of the requried link

String url=element.getAttribute("href");

//calling verifyLink() method here. Passing the parameter as url which we collected in the above link

//See the detailed functionality of the verifyLink(url) method below

verifyLink(url);

}

// The below function verifyLink(String urlLink) verifies any broken links and return the server status.

public static void verifyLink(String urlLink) {

//Sometimes we may face exception "java.net.MalformedURLException". Keep the code in try catch block to continue the broken link analysis

try {

//Use URL Class - Create object of the URL Class and pass the urlLink as parameter

URL link = new URL(urlLink);

// Create a connection using URL object (i.e., link)

HttpURLConnection httpConn =(HttpURLConnection)link.openConnection();

//Set the timeout for 2 seconds

httpConn.setConnectTimeout(2000);

//connect using connect method

httpConn.connect();

//use getResponseCode() to get the response code.

if(httpConn.getResponseCode()== 200) {

System.out.println(urlLink+" - "+httpConn.getResponseMessage());

}

if(httpConn.getResponseCode()== 404) {

System.out.println(urlLink+" - "+httpConn.getResponseMessage());

}

//getResponseCode method returns = IOException - if an error occurred connecting to the server.

catch (Exception e) {

//e.printStackTrace();

}

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