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How to Handle Dropdown in Selenium webdriver

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Dropdown in Selenium webdriver

Hello, Guys, Welcome to Selenium tutorial, today in this post we will see how to handle Dropdown in Selenium webdriver.

Generally, while working with the script we have to select some values from the dropdown and do other activity and validate. The dropdown is just like simple WebElement like Checkbox, textbox etc.

 

Before moving to Dropdown in Selenium webdriver check out few useful posts that will help you while writing scripts.

Dynamic XPath in Selenium

Xpath Plugin for Chrome and ChroPath for Chrome for XPath

 

Please refer the video for the same.

 

 

 

 

Dropdown in Selenium webdriver

Select values from Dropdown in Selenium webdriver

For handling dropdowns, Selenium already provides Select class that has some predefined method which help is a lot while working with Dropdown.

Select class can be find in below package.

org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.Select

 

Select values Dropdown in Selenium webdriver

Let’s Discuss some of the methods and will see the detailed program as well.

  • Select value using Index.

WebElement month_dropdown=driver.findElement(By.id(“month”));

Select month=new Select(month_dropdown);

 month.selectByIndex(4);

Explanation- Here selectbyIndex(int) is method which accept integer as argument so depends on index it will select values. If you give index as 4, it will select 5th value.

Note- Index will start from 0.

 

  • Select value using value attribute.
WebElement month_dropdown=driver.findElement(By.id("month"));

 Select month=new Select(month_dropdown);

 month.selectByValue(“5”);

Explanation- Here selectByValue(String) is a method which accepts values it means whatever value you have in your dropdown. Please refer below screenshot to see how to get values from the dropdown.

In our example we have taken value as 5 it means it will select May from dropdown.

 

  • Select value from Visible text
WebElement month_dropdown=driver.findElement(By.id("month"));

 Select month=new Select(month_dropdown);

 month.selectByVisibleText("Aug");

Explanation- We can also select the value from the text as well. This is very straight forward that whatever text we are passing it simply select that value.

Note- This is case sensitive it means if I pass Aug and dropdown has aug then Selenium will not be able to select value and it will fail your program so make sure Text which you are passing is correct.

In the above example, I am passing Aug in the argument so it will select aug from the dropdown.

 

  • Get Selected option from Dropdown.
WebElement month_dropdown=driver.findElement(By.id("month"));

 Select month=new Select(month_dropdown);

 WebElement first_value=month.getFirstSelectedOption();

 String value=first_value.getText();

Explanation- Here getFirstSelectedOption() will return the first selected option and will return you the WebElement then you can use getText() method to extract text and validate the same based on your requirement

 

  • Get All option from dropdown
WebElement month_dropdown=driver.findElement(By.id("month"));

Select month=new Select(month_dropdown);

List<WebElement> dropdown=month.getOptions();

 for(int i=0;i<dropdown.size();i++){

 String drop_down_values=dropdown.get(i).getText();

 System.out.println("dropdown values are "+drop_down_values);

 }

Explanation- getOptions() is a method of Select class which will return List of WebElement then we can iterate using for loop or iterator and using getText() method we can extract values.

I have another very useful video which will show you how you can handle dropdown which does not have any Select class as well.

This is called BootStrap Dropdown and you can handle them using the findElements method. I have created a video for the same.

Hope you have enjoyed the article and videos. If yes then do share with your friends and let me know if any help required from my side.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Revathi says

    Hi Mukesh,

    How to select the value (string) from drop down list using selenium.
    I used “Selectfromdropdownbyvalue”. but it fails.kindly help me

    Reply

  3. Vishal Gupta says

    Hi , mukesh i am getting Element could not be scrolled into view exception, i dont know how to use scrolling inside a select tag i have tried and searched so much on internet but not getting exactly what i want, my drop down contains a scroll option .

    Reply

  4. Parth says

    Hello admin i got this error in eclipse console
    “Element should have been “select” but was “div””

    Here below is my code for dropdownlist (i used xpath because there is nothing show in element)
    WebElement location = driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//*[@id=\”WorkOrderModal_outlet_id\”]/div/div/div[1]”));
    Select locations = new Select(location);
    locations.selectByIndex(2);
    }

    Reply

  5. Chetan Sonawane says

    Hi Mukesh,

    I have a scenario where few more options are added in the country dropdown like (added 10 more countries), Could you please help me how to verify that newly added options are available in the dropdown ?

    Your help is much appreciated !!

    Thanks in advanced 🙂

    Reply

  7. dee says

    we can also make use of the for loop in below way,

    //monthdropdown handling
    WebElement month_dropdown = driver.findElement(By.id(“month”));
    Select month_dd=new Select(month_dropdown);

    //fetching total no.of options present in dropdown
    List getvaluesmonth_dd=month_dd.getOptions();

    //printing total no using size()
    int totalvaluesinmonth_dd=getvaluesmonth_dd.size();
    System.out.println(“total options in month dropdown is “+totalvaluesinmonth_dd);

    for(int i=0;i<getvaluesmonth_dd.size();i++){
    System.out.println(getvaluesmonth_dd.get(i).getText());
    }

    Reply

  9. nayana says

    hi
    could please help me as I have to prepare an interview as an automation tester.
    please advise which part need to more focus.

    Reply

  10. Rahul says

    The chrome driver clicks on the wrong element when the browser zoom level is not set to 100%, how can i solve this issue ?

    Reply

    • Mukesh Otwani says

      Hi Rahul,

      Its always recommendable to have 100% zoom setting for all browsers while using Selenium. There is a limitation for this. Please check this Chromium Bug where same bug has been posted log back into chromium project

      Reply

  11. Saiprasad says

    Hi Mukesh,

    How to do the select values from an excel. Suppose that i am writing a code for a form for which i am taking values from an excel. Now how to deal with select method. How to write a program for select method which would select a value based on the excel data

    Reply

  13. Chedomil says

    Hello Mukesh,
    How can I select last value in in dropdown, when I do not know final index?
    This option would be perfect, but…
    abc.selectByIndex(max index)
    or
    abc.selectByValue(contains “something”)
    abc.getLastSelectedOption 🙂
    Do you have any advice about this?

    Reply

  15. Srihari Babu Anaparthi says

    Hi Mukesh,

    I am trying to select dropdown value using selectByVisiabletext option but it is not working IE9 Browser.Could you pls help me.

    Thanks,
    Srihari

    Reply

  17. Dhanalakshmi says

    Hi mukesh ,
    I have error in my code..
    plz resolve it

    FirefoxDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
    driver.get(“http://www.gmail.com”);

    File srcFile= driver.getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE);
    File destFile= new File(“D://image.png”);
    FileUtils.copyFile(srcFile, destFile);

    Reply

  18. Dhanalakshmi says

    Hi Mukesh,
    Im getting error in this code. plz resolve it.
    FirefoxDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
    driver.get(“http://www.airindia.com”);
    Select select=new Select(driver.findElement(By.xpath(“.//*[@id=’_classType1′]”))Select.selectByValue(3));

    Reply

    • Mukesh Otwani says

      Hey Anusha,

      You have 2 options to do this. You can get all dropdown using by tagname and then run a for loop to handle this.

      I have also recorded the video for another kind of dropdown which will give you clear picture.

      Reply

  22. Radik says

    Hi Mukesh,
    Thanks you so much for your excellent tutorial.

    I wanted to ask how can I convert WebElement to string so I can use array list?
    I want to solve your assignment.
    Please assist.

    Thanks
    Radik

    Reply

  23. RC says

    Hi.

    I dont know what i am doing wrong. but my select is not working. iv tried facebook and many other demo sites. need help plz

    RC

    Reply

  26. shabana banu says

    Hi Mukesh

    I like your article and I am following it, but I am stuck with div class. I dont know how to select the item from div class drop down, please help me out.

    Thanks
    Shabana

    Reply

  27. Raju Raipure says

    Hi Mukesh,
    I have a drop down option which displays the options on mouse over. I want o get all the options available under the drop down. Can you please suggest how can I do it?
    Thanks

    Reply

  29. Amit Chaudhary says

    Hi Mukesh,

    Thanks for your reply. My code is working fine now, i messed up with index value in my code.

    But now i have another problem related to radio buttons, there is page on which only 2 radio buttons are visible on application and 2 radio are hidden, but i want to select the first visible radio button. Is there any way i can do this ?

    below are steps you use to create a scenario-
    open link – https://www.fedex.com/ratefinder/home?cc=US&language=en&locId=express
    select *No. of packages as ‘2’ under additional information section
    here i want to select first radio button based on index rather than any other attribute.

    Thanks,
    Amit Chaudhary

    Reply

    • Atul gupta says

      Hi Mukesh,

      I have seen you all videos. All are very helpful to me and i am enhancing my skill through this all.

      today i have a query now that If we have multiple dropdown and all dropdown is depend on previous one selection dropdown. How we will execute second one or how to write the script in webdriver.

      Ex:- one dropdrown for Mobile Brand name
      Second dropdown for Mobile Model so mobile model name depend on Brand name.
      Can you provide me solution as soon as possible please.

      Regard.

      Atul gupta

      Reply

  30. Amit Chaudhary says

    Hi Mukesh,

    i’m trying to trying to perform select operation on a dropdown using index of the element. Something like this –

    For Example, here i’m writing below code to select some values from any dropdown from a page using index. But below code is not working, Can you please help me on this ?

    List el = driver.findElements(By.tagName(“select”));

    Select select = new Select(el.get(index));
    select.selectByVisibleText(value);

    Reply

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