Selecting an option from a dropdown in website with multiple dropdowns using Python/Selenium

Question

I am attempting to select an option form a dropdown menu using selenium in python but kept getting an error that says "Message: Could not locate element with visible text: Active - Milestone VUL-G"

I figured out that the issue is likely that in the HTML for the websource, there are two dropdowns with the exact same coding

Here is my python code:

When I try this, I believe it goes to the FIRST dropdown, and so it cant find the option I am looking for because its the wrong dropdown. How do I get it to look for the 2nd dropdown in the website? There seems to be a Primary site and Secondary site

Thanks!

Answer 1

In its current format, I think forming an xpath locator is probably your best bet.

However, the 2 dropdowns, as you say, have the same name and id. I think I'd raise this as a bug - ids are generally meant to be unique at the very least. If nothing else, it's made your automated test creation effort that much harder - testability is a measure of how easy the system is to test. Duplicate ids decrease testability!

Answer 2

I can find the difference , If you want to use the 2nd drop-down. Use the header tag else everything looks same. So try to create the dynamic x-path something like //*[@text="Variable Product Performance"]//following::Select[1]

Try this maybe this helps...

Answer 3

when ever you want to find an element uniquely , and that element doesn't have a unique attribute then find a parent that has an unique attribute and use it as referrence

In your case the div tag is the referrence , if you want second drop down use:

product_id_box = driver.find_element_by_xpath('//div[@class="Site-secondary"]//*[@id="productid"]')

you can also do :

parent = driver.find_element_by_class_name('Site-secondary')
product_id_box=  parent.find_element_by_id("product-id")