Selecting multiple options and deselecting options using Selenium with python

Question

I am trying to open a webpage and select options before submitting the form. The issue I am having is being able to selecting more than one option in the select box. Eventually I want to be able to deselect an option as well and submit the the form.

A snippet of the relevant html and python code is below

Snippet of html:

<select size="10" name="ctl00$MainContent$lbCommodity" multiple="multiple" id="ctl00_MainContent_lbCommodity">
    <option value="101">Wheat - HRW</option>
    <option value="102">Wheat - SRW</option>
    <option value="103">Wheat - HRS</option>
    <option value="104">Wheat - White</option>
    <option value="105">Wheat - Durum</option>

Python code:

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("http://apps.fas.usda.gov/esrquery/esrq.aspx")
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//select[@name='ctl00$MainContent$lbCommodity']/option[@value='801']").click()

Answer 1

1. read up on Select object - http://selenium-python.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api.html?highlight=select#module-selenium.webdriver.support.select

2. Use IDs or names, or even CSS before XPATH. Best practices, explained here

Answer 2

Hope this below code helps:

driver=new firefoxdriver();

//create select class object for selecting multiple select box field

Select s=new Select(driver.findElement(by.cssSelector("select[multiple='multiple']"));

/*you can use selectByVisibleText() predefined method of Select class for selecting multiple values*/

s.selectByVisibleText("Wheat - HRW");
s.selectByVisibleText("Wheat - White");