How can I select the checkboxes in this div correctly passing in a name via String?

Question

My page looks like:

<div class="tabBox">
<table id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType">
    <tbody><tr>
        <td><input id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_0" type="checkbox" name="ctl00$ctl00$MainContentPlaceHolder$MainContentPlaceHolderPM$lstAndroidDeviceType$0" value="10"><label for="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_0">1</label></td>
    </tr><tr>
        <td><input id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_1" type="checkbox" name="ctl00$ctl00$MainContentPlaceHolder$MainContentPlaceHolderPM$lstAndroidDeviceType$1" value="17"><label for="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_1">2222222</label></td>
    </tr><tr>
        <td><input id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_2" type="checkbox" name="ctl00$ctl00$MainContentPlaceHolder$MainContentPlaceHolderPM$lstAndroidDeviceType$2" value="6"><label for="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_2">2323</label></td>
    </tr><tr>
        <td><input id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_3" type="checkbox" name="ctl00$ctl00$MainContentPlaceHolder$MainContentPlaceHolderPM$lstAndroidDeviceType$3" value="7"><label for="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_3">232323</label></td>
    </tr><tr>
        <td><input id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_4" type="checkbox" name="ctl00$ctl00$MainContentPlaceHolder$MainContentPlaceHolderPM$lstAndroidDeviceType$4" value="12"><label for="ctl00_ctl00_MainContentPlaceHolder_MainContentPlaceHolderPM_lstAndroidDeviceType_4">4</label></td>
    </tr><tr>

</tbody></table>
                                                </div>

My goal is to create a method that will take a String and and as a result click the corresponding checkbox.

public void toggleDeviceType(String name) {}

toggleDeviceType("nameOfDevice")

How can I select the checkboxes in this div by passing in a name via a String?

note: whats the best way to handle multiple selection here? I don't want the user writing a test outside the framework to be creating an array and adding to it themselves, would rather take care of it in the framework itself

Answer 1

You can use xquery which is xpath, but the string is formatted differently. The specify the text to look for in that. driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@class='tabBox']//input[@value='string'])) Depending on your control type this should allow you to pass in the 'string' part as a variable to find the specific input box you are looking for. You can then call the .click(); method once you find the specific checkbox.

Optionally you can also read in the input control itself and then select the corresponding value. However, your html looks more like it's a table with separate inputs for each row instead of a full control, which is why I indicated the specific input target instead of the other way.

Answer 2

The solution I used in the end was:

    public void disableMultipleDevices(String[] device) {   
    for (String s : device) {
    WebElement ElementByName = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//label[text()='"+s+"']/preceding-sibling::input[@type='checkbox']"));
    if (ElementByName.isSelected()) {
        ElementByName.click();
    }           
    }
}

Note to anybody who may come across this in future, naively I didn't even consider calling .click(); on the label element, this would of solved my problem much easier, so I would urge you to try that out first in a similar situation.