There many ways to locate a web element:

• by name

<input name="email" />

• by id

<input id="email"/>

• by class

<button class="btn_on" />

• by css
• by xpath
• by link text

<div href="/help.html">Help</div>

• …

Then i created a method to handle all case above like:

public static By getElement(String how,String locator){

By el = null;

if (how.equalsIgnoreCase("name")) el = By.name(locator);

elseif(how.equalsIgnoreCase("id")) el = By.id(locator);

elseif(how.equalsIgnoreCase("xpath")) el = By.xpath(locator);

elseif(how.equalsIgnoreCase("linktext")) el = By.linkText(locator);

else System.out.println("Cannot locate element with "+how);

return el;

}