Handling Drop-Downs - Selenium WebDriver

Handling dropdown is a common scenario in web application testing. Selenium WebDriver provides a way to select an option from a dropdown menu using the Select class. In this tutorial, we will learn how to handle dropdowns in Selenium WebDriver.

Syntax

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select

select = Select(driver.find_element_by_name('dropdown_name'))

# select by visible text
select.select_by_visible_text('Option1')

# select by value 
select.select_by_value('value1')

# select by index
select.select_by_index(0)

Example

Suppose we want to select an option from the following HTML code which contains a dropdown menu.

<select name="colors">
    <option value="red">Red</option>
    <option value="blue">Blue</option>
    <option value="green">Green</option>
    <option value="yellow">Yellow</option>
</select>

Here is how we can use the above code to select an option from the dropdown menu using Selenium WebDriver-

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("https://example.com")

# Locate the dropdown element
dropdown = Select(driver.find_element_by_name('colors'))

# Select an option using visible text
dropdown.select_by_visible_text('Blue')

Output

The above code will select the option "Blue" from the dropdown list and the output will depend on the requirements.

Explanation

In the above example, we first locate the dropdown element using find_element_by_name() method and then create a Select object by passing the dropdown element as an argument. Using the select_by_visible_text() method, we can select an option based on the visible text of the option.

We can also select an option based on its index or value using select_by_index() and select_by_value() methods respectively.

Use

Dropdown menus are commonly used in web applications. Testing these menus is important to verify that the expected options exist and that the selected option is properly recorded.

Important Points

• Make sure to first locate the dropdown element using the appropriate locator.
• The Select class provides methods to select an option based on visible text, value, or index.
• To deselect all selected options, use the deselect_all() method of the Select class.

Summary

Handling dropdown menus is a common scenario in web application testing. Selenium WebDriver provides the Select class to handle dropdown menus. We can use the select_by_visible_text(), select_by_value(), and select_by_index() methods of the Select class to select an option from a dropdown menu based on visible text, value, or index respectively.