How to make Nightwatch use xpath by default in page object files

All my page objects look something like this:

  elements: {
      header: {
         locateStrategy: 'xpath',
         selector: "//h3[text()='Welcome']"
      },
      loginButton: {
         locateStrategy: 'xpath',
         selector: "//button[text()='Login']"
      },
      forgotPasswordLink: {
         locateStrategy: 'xpath',
         selector: "//a[text()='Forgot Password?']"
      },
      signupButton: {
         locateStrategy: 'xpath',
         selector: "//button[text()='Signup']"
      }

It would be way better if I could just say "use xpath everywhere" - that would all collapse mightily

The docs say that you should be able to set "use_xpath" : true in your "test settings", but I have tried that in all the places I can see in nightwatch.json, and it doesn't have any effect.

(It's not completely clear if they mean that this setting will affect declarations in page object files, in any case: the example only shows it affecting subequent assert calls in the test case).

You can just use a javascript function like this (depending on your favourite way to create objects):

var xSelector = function (selector) {
    return {
        selector: selector,
        locateStrategy: 'xpath'
    }
};

And then use it like so:

elements: {

    xxx: xSelector('//a[text()="Bank Details"]')
    createStepButton: { selector: '#menu-create-item' },
}

Hint: In the sample above the createStepButton is still using the css selector strategy. Consider also creating a cssSelector function for uniform readability of the elements section.