Keys.ARROW_DOWN does not select an item in the 'Select Box'?

Question

I have a select box which has 3 values in the drop-down. When I click on the select box and then further use click() on the value item , it works fine. but when I use Keys.ARROW_DOWN its displays the select values but does not click/select the item in drop down. Also I don't want to use 'Select' class for it.

driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='ctl04_Pane2_AttributeDefinitionCategoryTest']/td[2]//td[2]")).click();

        Thread.sleep(2000);

        driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='ctl04_Pane2_AttributeDefinitionCategoryTest']/td[2]/div/select")).sendKeys(Keys.ARROW_DOWN);

Also if the 'Id' of the select box changes dynamically, then should we use the webdriver 'Select' class for it?

Answer 1

You could use

 driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='ctl04_Pane2_AttributeDefinitionCategoryTest']/td[2]/div/select")).sendKeys(Keys.RETURN);

for an easy fix. However there are other ways to select by the value.

    Select select = new Select(driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='ctl04_Pane2_AttributeDefinitionCategoryTest']/td[2]/div/select")));
    select.selectByVisibleText("Insert Text Here");

Answer 2

use driver.switchto().activeelement() before sending the arrow keys.