Consider using a fluent API

Martin Fowler coined the term “Fluent API”. Selenium already implements something like this in their FluentWait class, which is meant as an alternative to the standard Wait class. You could enable the Fluent API design pattern in your page object and then query the Google search page with a code snippet like this one:

driver.get( "http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=ww" );
GoogleSearchPage gsp = new GoogleSearchPage();
gsp.withFluent().setSearchString().clickSearchButton();

The Google page object class with this fluent behavior might look like this:

public class GoogleSearchPage extends LoadableComponent<GoogleSearchPage> {
  private final WebDriver driver;
  private GSPFluentInterface gspfi;

  public class GSPFluentInterface {
    private GoogleSearchPage gsp;

    public GSPFluentInterface(GoogleSearchPage googleSearchPage) {
        gsp = googleSearchPage;
    }

    public GSPFluentInterface clickSearchButton() {
        gsp.searchButton.click();
        return this;
    }

    public GSPFluentInterface setSearchString( String sstr ) {
        clearAndType( gsp.searchField, sstr );
        return this;
    }
  }

  @FindBy(id = "gbqfq") private WebElement searchField;
  @FindBy(id = "gbqfb") private WebElement searchButton;
  public GoogleSearchPage(WebDriver driver) {
    gspfi = new GSPFluentInterface( this );
    this.get(); // If load() fails, calls isLoaded() until page is finished loading
    PageFactory.initElements(driver, this); // Initialize WebElements on page
  }

  public GSPFluentInterface withFluent() {
    return gspfi;
  }

  public void clickSearchButton() {
    searchButton.click();
  }

  public void setSearchString( String sstr ) {
    clearAndType( searchField, sstr );
  }

  @Override
  protected void isLoaded() throws Error {
    Assert.assertTrue("Google search page is not yet loaded.", isSearchFieldVisible() );
  }

  @Override
  protected void load() {
    if ( isSFieldPresent ) {
      Wait<WebDriver> wait = new WebDriverWait( driver, Duration.ofSeconds(3) );
      wait.until( visibilityOfElementLocated( By.id("gbqfq") ) ).click();
    }
  }
}
Last modified December 7, 2021: reorganize documentation and update titles (#861) [deploy site] (872174bfdd)