What is the correct way to select an <option> using Selenium's Python WebDriver

Question

I would like to select an <option> child of a <select> using the Python WebDriver.

I have a reference to the option WebElement I wish to select and have tried select() and click() methods but neither works.

What is the correct way to select an <option>?

Answer 1

The easiest way that I have found was to do something along the lines of:

el = driver.find_element_by_id('id_of_select')
for option in el.find_elements_by_tag_name('option'):
    if option.text == 'The Options I Am Looking For':
        option.click() # select() in earlier versions of webdriver
        break

This may have some runtime issues if there are a large number of options, but for us it suffices.

Also this code will work with multi-select

def multiselect_set_selections(driver, element_id, labels):
    el = driver.find_element_by_id(element_id)
    for option in el.find_elements_by_tag_name('option'):
        if option.text in labels:
            option.click()

Then you can transform the following field

# ERROR: Caught exception [ERROR: Unsupported command [addSelection | id=deformField7 | label=ALL]]

Into this call

multiselect_set_selections(driver, 'deformField7', ['ALL'])

Multiple selection errors like the following:

 # ERROR: Caught exception [ERROR: Unsupported command [addSelection | id=deformField5 | label=Apr]]
 # ERROR: Caught exception [ERROR: Unsupported command [addSelection | id=deformField5 | label=Jun]]

Will be fixed with a single call:

multiselect_set_selections(driver, 'deformField5', ['Apr', 'Jun'])

Answer 2

I think using selenium.webdriver.support.ui.Select is the cleanest way:

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

b = webdriver.Firefox()

# navigate to the page
select = Select(b.find_element_by_id(....))
print select.options
print [o.text for o in select.options] # these are string-s
select.select_by_visible_text(....)

Using this approach is also the fastest way. I wrote fast_multiselect as analogous function to multiselect_set_selections. On a test with 4 calls to multiselect_set_selections on lists of about 20 items each, the average running time is 16.992 seconds, where fast_multiselect is only 10.441 seconds. Also the latter is much less complicated.

 from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select

 def fast_multiselect(driver, element_id, labels):
     select = Select(driver.find_element_by_id(element_id))
     for label in labels:
         select.select_by_visible_text(label)

Answer 3

Similar to Will's answer, but finds the <select> by its element name, and clicks based on the <option> text.

from selenium import webdriver
b = webdriver.Firefox()
b.find_element_by_xpath("//select[@name='element_name']/option[text()='option_text']").click()

Answer 4

I had a similar problem and was able to resolve it by finding the elements by xpath:

from selenium import webdriver
b = webdriver.Firefox()
#...some commands here
b.find_element_by_xpath("//select/option[@value='The Options I am Looking for']").click()

Answer 5

easier way to manipulate the dropdowns

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

driver.get("link")
select = Select(driver.find_element_by_id('<given id name>'))
select.select_by_index(3)

Answer 6

Using the latest rewritten version (1.0.1) of facebook/php-webdriver:

$optionCssSelector = WebDriverBy::cssSelector("#order_images_row_wrapper .order-wrapper .merge-image-select option[value='2']");
$this->driver->findElements($optionCssSelector)[0]->click();