How to select a list item from a drop down by its value using Selenium Webdriver C#

Question

I want to select a drop down value. The problem is the drop down list is derived, it is written as list items. Code snippet as follows:

<div class="rcbScroll" style="width: 100%; height: 184px; overflow: auto;">
<ul class="rcbList" style="width: 100%">
 <li class="rcbItem">Option 1</li>
 <li class="rcbItem">Option 2</li>
 <li class="rcbItem">Option 3</li>
</ul>

How do I select 'Option 2' as the selected value in the drop down?

• Will Ray: Is this a ul styled to look like a dropdown? Or did you mean to use an actual select element?
• Annie: This is a ul element styled to look like a drop down.

Answer 1

using CSS Selectors in Selenium:

you can get value of nth child by finding it with CSS Selector.

// first child: will return "Option 1"
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("ul.rcbList > li:nth-child(1)"));
// second child: will return "Option 2"
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("ul.rcbList > li:nth-child(2)"));
// nth child: will return "Option n"
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("ul.rcbList > li:nth-child(n)"));

In case of when <li> items are dynamic, then get count and loop over and get all the values.

var el_count = driver.FindElements(By.CssSelector("ul.rcbList"));
for(int index=0; index < el_count.count(); index++){
 // 0 (zero) is the first element in <ul> DOM Array
 driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("ul > li:nth-child(index)"));
}

Finding element by Text (value)

Easier way would be finding by xPath and Class

var title = driver.FindElement(By.XPath("./div[@class='aCont']/div/a/span[text() = 'TextToFind']"));
// now title contains text, title = "text to be find"

for more -Example code

• Annie: Thank you. The first option was sufficient for me.
• Annie: With a slight change. driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("ul.rcbList > li:nth-child(1)")).Click(); (where I had to specify the class name of the ulelement)
• Annie: Is there a syntax I could follow to select the list item by its value? something along the lines that the list item contains "Option 2"
• Annie: Thank you. Your code seems to be correct. so, I ll mark it as the answer. However, the system I'm working with is a bit more complex to automate. Thanks anyway.
• Kaleem Ullah: for complex system: 1. get full domain knowledge (not syntax knowledge) 2. python for scrapping 3. R language for scrapping.

Answer 2

try (only if ul is treated as dropdown):

SelectElement selectElement = new SelectElement(driver.FindElement(By.cssSelector(".rcbList")));
selectElement.SelectByText("Option 2");

Reference:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/31072586/2575259

• Annie: Sorry. Didn't work for this scenario. SelectElement can only be used for select-option HTML element, not for unordered list items.