页面对象模型返回动作而不是对象？

Question

Picking up a Java-Selenium framework, and noticed that the previous owner has a lot of page object models that are defined as java classes, but instead of returning a driver.findElement() , they are returning a driver.findElement().click();

EDIT: You guys are correct it's not returning per say

public void leftnav_home_link() { driver.findElement().click(); }

I've never seen this before, but is this valid/follows the ideals of a page object model?

What kind of potential problems can this lead into?

Answer 1

It doesn't make sense, since according to the source code , click() on a WebElement just executes the remote driver command and returns nothing:

public void click() {
    execute(DriverCommand.CLICK_ELEMENT, ImmutableMap.of("id", id));
}

Answer 2

In terms of page objects, if the 'action' you refer to is a action to the next page, the normal thing would be to have a PageObjectX class with a normal constructor and a click method returning the next page object. The click method might be implemented like this, which is not unusual:

public class PageObjectX extends LoadableComponent {
    private final WebDriver driver;
    @FindBy(id = "go") private WebElement goB;
    PageObjectX {
        PageFactory.initElements(driver, this);
    }
    @Override
    protected void load() {
      driver.get("http://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/entry");
    }

    @Override
    protected void isLoaded() throws Error {
      String url = driver.getCurrentUrl();
      assertTrue("Not on the issue entry page: " + url, url.endsWith("/entry"));
    }

    public PageObjectY clickGoToY() {
            driver.findElement( goB );
            return new PageObjectY();
    }
}