Selenide Collection shouldHave Complete Reference

Selenide's collection API — accessed via $$ and returning ElementsCollection — is one of the most powerful and underused features of the library. Where raw WebDriver gives you a List<WebElement> and leaves you to write loops and assertions yourself, Selenide provides a fluent DSL with size assertions, text matching, filtering, and waiting all built in. Knowing the collection API in 2026 means you can write tests against tables, lists, dropdowns, and dynamic grids in 2-3 lines instead of 20.

This reference covers every collection condition and operation available in Selenide 7+. We walk through size assertions, text matching variants, filter and find operations, indexing, snapshot semantics, custom collection conditions, and patterns for testing tables and infinite scroll. Every example is working Java code.

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Key Takeaways

• $$("selector") returns an ElementsCollection — a lazy, retry-aware collection
• CollectionCondition is the assertion class (separate from element Condition)
• shouldHave accepts collection conditions like size, texts, exactTexts
• filter, filterBy, find, findBy narrow collections by predicates
• first(), last(), get(n) select specific elements
• Collections are lazy — assertions trigger evaluation with retries

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Basic Pattern

import static com.codeborne.selenide.Selenide.$$;
import static com.codeborne.selenide.CollectionCondition.*;

// Find all li elements
ElementsCollection items = $$("ul.todos li");

// Assert size
items.shouldHave(size(3));

// Assert content
items.shouldHave(exactTexts("Buy milk", "Walk dog", "Write tests"));

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Size Conditions

Condition	Behavior
size(N)	Exactly N elements
sizeNotEqual(N)	Not equal to N
sizeGreaterThan(N)	More than N
sizeGreaterThanOrEqual(N)	At least N
sizeLessThan(N)	Fewer than N
sizeLessThanOrEqual(N)	At most N
empty	No elements
anyMatch(predicate)	At least one matches
allMatch(predicate)	All match
noneMatch(predicate)	None match

$$(".item").shouldHave(size(5));
$$(".error").shouldHave(empty);
$$(".result").shouldHave(sizeGreaterThan(0));
$$(".item").shouldHave(anyMatch("at least one is visible", el -> el.isDisplayed()));

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Text Conditions

Condition	Semantics
texts("a", "b", "c")	Each element's text contains substring at that index
exactTexts(...)	Each element's text equals exactly
textsInAnyOrder(...)	Substrings match in any order
exactTextsCaseSensitiveInAnyOrder(...)	Exact match, any order
itemWithText("hello")	At least one item contains the text
partialTexts(...)	Substring per element

$$("td.name").shouldHave(exactTexts("Alice", "Bob", "Carol"));
$$(".tag").shouldHave(textsInAnyOrder("react", "vue", "svelte"));
$$(".user").shouldHave(itemWithText("Diana"));

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Attribute Conditions

$$("input").shouldHave(attributes(
    "type", "email", "text", "password"
));

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Filter and Find Operations

Filter returns a sub-collection; find returns a single element (the first match):

Method	Returns	Use
filter(condition)	ElementsCollection	Multiple matches
filterBy(condition)	ElementsCollection	Alias for filter
find(condition)	SelenideElement	First match
findBy(condition)	SelenideElement	Alias for find
exclude(condition)	ElementsCollection	Negation

import static com.codeborne.selenide.Condition.*;

// All visible items
$$(".item").filter(visible).shouldHave(size(5));

// All items with class "active"
$$(".item").filterBy(cssClass("active")).shouldHave(size(2));

// First button with text "Submit"
SelenideElement submit = $$("button").findBy(text("Submit"));
submit.click();

// All non-disabled options
$$(".option").exclude(disabled).shouldHave(size(10));

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Indexing

Method	Returns
first()	First element
last()	Last element
get(n)	Element at index n
first(n)	First n elements (sub-collection)
last(n)	Last n elements
from(n)	Elements from index n onward

$$("tr.row").first().shouldHave(text("Header"));
$$("tr.row").last().shouldHave(cssClass("highlighted"));
$$("tr.row").get(2).click();
$$("tr.row").first(3).shouldHave(exactTexts("a", "b", "c"));

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Snapshot vs Live

Selenide collections are LIVE by default — they re-evaluate when accessed. To freeze a snapshot:

ElementsCollection liveItems = $$(".item");
ElementsCollection snapshot = liveItems.snapshot();

// Now snapshot doesn't change even if DOM updates

Use snapshots when you want to compare before/after states.

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Custom Collection Conditions

import com.codeborne.selenide.CollectionCondition;
import com.codeborne.selenide.impl.CollectionSource;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import java.util.List;

CollectionCondition allHighlighted = new CollectionCondition() {
    @Override
    public CheckResult check(CollectionSource collection) {
        List<WebElement> elements = collection.getElements();
        for (WebElement e : elements) {
            if (!e.getCssValue("background-color").equals("rgb(255, 255, 0)")) {
                return CheckResult.rejected("Not highlighted", elements);
            }
        }
        return CheckResult.accepted();
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() { return "all highlighted"; }
};

$$(".alert").shouldHave(allHighlighted);

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Iteration Patterns

Avoid manual iteration where possible. When you must:

$$(".item").asFixedIterable().forEach(item -> {
    item.shouldBe(visible);
    System.out.println(item.getText());
});

asFixedIterable() snapshots the collection so iteration is stable.

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Table Patterns

Tables are a classic use case. To find a row by cell content:

// Find row whose first cell text equals "Alice"
SelenideElement aliceRow = $$("table.users tr")
    .findBy(text("Alice"));

// Click action in that row
aliceRow.$("button.edit").click();

To assert column data:

$$("table.users td.email")
    .shouldHave(exactTexts("alice@example.com", "bob@example.com", "carol@example.com"));

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Infinite Scroll Patterns

ElementsCollection items = $$(".feed-item");

while (items.size() < 50) {
    Selenide.executeJavaScript("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight)");
    items = $$(".feed-item");
    Selenide.sleep(500);
}

items.shouldHave(sizeGreaterThanOrEqual(50));

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Chained Selectors

// All buttons inside the first row
$$("tr").first().$$("button").shouldHave(size(3));

// All inputs inside visible cards
$$(".card").filter(visible).first().$$("input").shouldHave(size(4));

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Wait Behavior

Collections retry until Configuration.timeout. Override per call:

$$(".item").shouldHave(size(10), Duration.ofSeconds(15));

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Anti-Patterns

Anti-pattern 1: .size() for assertion. size() returns immediately:

// Bad
assertEquals(5, $$(".item").size());

// Good
$$(".item").shouldHave(size(5));

Anti-pattern 2: Looping with asDynamicIterable(). Dynamic iteration re-fetches on every step and can loop forever:

// Bad
for (SelenideElement item : $$(".item").asDynamicIterable()) {
    item.click(); // collection may change after click
}

// Good
List<SelenideElement> snapshot = $$(".item").asFixedIterable().stream().toList();
snapshot.forEach(SelenideElement::click);

Anti-pattern 3: Manual filtering. Use filter instead of streams:

// Bad
List<WebElement> visible = $$(".item").stream()
    .filter(WebElement::isDisplayed)
    .toList();

// Good
ElementsCollection visible = $$(".item").filter(Condition.visible);

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Reference Card

Goal	Code
Count elements	$$.shouldHave(size(N))
Assert no elements	$$.shouldHave(empty)
Match texts in order	$$.shouldHave(exactTexts(...))
Match texts any order	$$.shouldHave(textsInAnyOrder(...))
Filter by predicate	$$.filter(condition)
Find first match	$$.findBy(condition)
Get specific index	$$.get(N)
Iterate stably	$$.asFixedIterable()
Custom condition	new CollectionCondition() { ... }

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Conclusion

Selenide's collection API is what makes the library so productive for real browser tests. Master shouldHave(size(...)), shouldHave(exactTexts(...)), filter, and findBy and you'll write half the test code you write today. For deeper coverage, see our Selenide Condition cheatsheet and Page Object best practices.

Explore the QA skills directory for related browser automation patterns.