How does element search work in Selenium?

In Selenium, element search on a page is performed using various locator strategies. The main search methods:

• By ID (findElement(By.id("elementId")))
• By name (findElement(By.name("elementName")))
• By CSS selector (findElement(By.cssSelector(".class #id")))
• By XPath (findElement(By.xpath("//tag[@attr='value']")))
• By class (findElement(By.className("className")))
• By tag (findElement(By.tagName("tag")))
• By link text (findElement(By.linkText("Link Text")))

Selenium uses the selected locator to find an element in the DOM structure of the page. If the element is found, a WebElement object is returned, which can be interacted with.

Example in Java:

WebElement button = driver.findElement(By.id("submit-button"));
button.click();

If the element is not found, a NoSuchElementException is thrown.