Selecting an option from a dropdown using Selenium and Python

Question

I want to select the visible text 'planned works' from the following drop-down list HTML:

<select id="NewEnquiry.Purpose" data-bind="options: SelectablePurposes, value: Purpose, optionsText: 'Name', optionsCaption: '-- Please Select --', validationOptions: { rule: 'Enquiry.Purpose' }"><option value="">-- Please Select --</option><option value="">Planned Works</option><option value="">Initial Enquiry</option><option value="">Emergency</option></select> <option value>-- Please Select --</option> <option value>Planned Works</option> <option value>Initial Enquiry</option> <option value>Emergency</option> 

The code I have been using, hasn't been working:

select = Select(driver.find_element_by_id('//*[@id="NewEnquiry.Purpose"]')) select.select_by_visible_text('Planned Works') 

and using the following import:

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select 

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The <select> element seems to be a dynamic element. So to select the <option> with text as Planned Works you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following locator strategies:

• Using CSS_SELECTOR:

  Select(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "select[id^='NewEnquiry'][data-bind*='SelectablePurposes']")))).select_by_visible_text('Planned Works') 

• Using XPATH:

  Select(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//select[starts-with(@id, 'NewEnquiry') and contains(@data-bind,'SelectablePurposes')]")))).select_by_visible_text('Planned Works') 

• Note : You have to add the following imports :

  from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC 

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References

You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:

• How to select an option from the dropdown menu using Selenium and Python