Drop-down selection automation using selenium for javascript

Question

I need to select a value from drop-down, which has javascript. Any help is highly appreciated!

Following HTML:

<div class="popupMenuButton">
 <a id="_sawrl" bh="PML" _mid="_g7yog" class="awmenuLink" style="text-decoration:none" href="#">
 <nobr>
 FORMALIN VAPO TABS
 <img width="15" height="17" align="absmiddle" border="0" style="margin-bottom:1px;" src="/EasyCare-2.0/AribaWeb/ad/content/AWXDebugResourceActions/13/en_US/widg/arrowcolor.gif" alt="">
 </nobr>
 </a>
</div>

Java code

WebElement dropDownListBox = waitById("_sawrl");
Select clickThis = new Select(dropDownListBox);
clickThis.selectByVisibleText("FORMALIN VAPO TABS")

Exception

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.UnexpectedTagNameException: Element should have been "select" but was "a"
Build info: version: '2.42.2', revision: '6a6995d', time: '2014-06-03 17:42:30'
System info: host: , os.name: 'Windows 8', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.2', java.version: '1.7.0_51'
Driver info: driver.version: unknown
 at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.Select.<init>(Select.java:46)
 at ui.stores.UIMaterialRecepit.setBrandName(UIMaterialRecepit.java:71)
 at tc.stores.TCMaterialRecepit.receiveMaterial(TCMaterialRecepit.java:32)
 at tc.StartAutmation.main(StartAutmation.java:48)

Answer 1

As the exception says:

Element should have been "select" but was "a".

Your dropDownListBox is an anchor element. (<a id="_sawrl"...).
new Select() only accepts <select> elements.

• Sudhir: Thank you for the response. Can you please add some light on selenium code?
• Cerbrus: I don't know anything about selenium. I'm just interpreting the error here.
• Matthias: Is it possible to see the behaviour of the website? Or maybe you could describe it? As Cerbrus mentioned, "new Select()" only accepts <select>-Elements. How does the anchor element react? Do you need to click it? Or maybe it just needs a mouseover-event?
• Sudhir: @Mathhias Anchor element react here by clicking the element. Indeed, it has list of elements. FYI, this application is in aribaweb. Please let me know if I need to add anything on the same.

Answer 2

As said by Cerbrus, your element is not a real select. You can handle such stuff by clicking.

Say, your 'select' looks like:

<div class="menubox-select AFGFLKJV">
 <div class="menuItem" row="1" >Info</div>
 <div class="menuItem" row="2" >Stuff</div>
 <div class="menuItem" row="3" >Teddy Bears</div>
</div>

Then, in order to select:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[contains(@class, 'menubox-select')]").findElement(By.xpath(".//*[contains(text(), 'Stuff')]").click();

That's quite a usual thing for custom selectboxes. You can, however, omit using element.findElement. Still before clicking an option you need to trigger options to be visible, otherwise you get exception.

Answer 3

I was able to figure out the problem. Thank you @Cerbrus and @TEH for the pointers.

Following is the java code:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='_sawrl']").click();
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='_immwib']").click();