Problem finding element with text when the text contains &nbsb;

Question

I have the following element in the DOM:

<div id="sourceListDiv">
 <select id="sourceList" onkeydown="uil.handleKeyDown(this)" size="15" ondblclick="uil.HandleDBLClickOnSourceList(this);">
 <option id="{88175AC5-E53B-4E67-826C-0E2A43A4E910}">Approval&nbsp;Process&nbsp;Type&nbsp;-&nbsp;(Approval&nbsp;Process&nbsp;Type)</option>
 <option id="{3CFB4862-B80B-45AD-B21E-82E377A59CD5}">Days&nbsp;Before&nbsp;Next&nbsp;Billing&nbsp;-&nbsp;(Calculates&nbsp;Days&nbsp;before&nbsp;Next&nbsp;Installment&nbsp;Due&nbsp;Date)</option>
 <option id="{800F55B6-1603-4FD5-ADCD-D030C2EFBAC9}">Days&nbsp;In&nbsp;Collection&nbsp;-&nbsp;(Calculates&nbsp;Days&nbsp;in&nbsp;Collection)</option>
 <option id="{5531AA05-A347-472C-8B5B-2CFAFE5542E6}">Days&nbsp;Past&nbsp;Due&nbsp;-&nbsp;(Delay&nbsp;days&nbsp;coming&nbsp;from&nbsp;Host)</option>
 <option id="{D7D18409-9685-4EEA-B664-2570288566D0}">Days&nbsp;in&nbsp;Strategy&nbsp;-&nbsp;(Days&nbsp;in&nbsp;Strategy)</option> 
 </select>
</div>

And need to use xpath in order to locate one of the options.

The code I am executing is this:

 searchForLookUpResult(itemName);
 clickOnLookUpSearchButton();
 System.out.println(driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@id='sourceListDiv']/select/option")).getText());
 itemName = itemName.replace(" ", "${nbsp}");
 System.out.println(itemName);
 driver.findElement(By.xpath("//option[text()=\"" + itemName + "\"]")).click();
 driver.findElement(By.xpath("ui_okButton")).click();
 if (frameContext.equals("Internal")) { switchToFrameManually(1); }
 else switchToDialogFrame();

But, it fails when it reaches the: driver.findElement(By.xpath("//option[text()=\"" + itemName + "\"]")).click(); part with the error:

org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//option[text()="Days${nbsp}Past${nbsp}Due${nbsp}-${nbsp}(Delay${nbsp}days${nbsp}coming${nbsp}from${nbsp}Host)"]"}

I took the ${nbsp} part from selenium in order to handle the in the DOM (saw it here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/247135/using-xpath-to-search-text-containing-nbsp)

The itemName parameter should be passed as a String because I am using it in a previous part of the same method. The value of the String passed is: "Days Past Due - (Delay days coming from Host)".

So far, all efforts have failed, with or without replace(), typing the ${nbsp} and or or its \u00A0 replacement. So any hints will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

After quite some search I found the solution on a c# related topic (I use Java, so I missed that one).

Modified my code to this:

 searchForLookUpResult(itemName);
 clickOnLookUpSearchButton();
 driver.findElement(By.xpath("//option[normalize-space(translate(., '\u00A0', ' '))='" + itemName + "']")).click();
 clickDialogOk();
 if (frameContext.equals("Internal")) { switchToFrameManually(1); }
 else switchToDialogFrame();

Apparently the normalize-space in coordination with the translate, did the trick and the element was uniquely identified.