Using Selenium 2's IWebDriver to interact with elements on the page

Question

I'm using Selenium's IWebDriver to write Unit Tests in C#.

Such is an example:

IWebDriver defaultDriver = new InternetExplorerDriver();
var ddl = driver.FindElements(By.TagName("select"));

The last line retrieves the select HTML element wrapped in a IWebElement.

I need a way to simulate selection to a specific option in that select list but I can't figure out how to do it.

Upon some research, I found examples where people are using the ISelenium DefaultSelenium class to accomplish the following, but I am not making use of this class because I'm doing everything with IWebDriver and INavigation (from defaultDriver.Navigate()).

I also noticed that ISelenium DefaultSelenium contains a ton of other methods that aren't available in the concrete implementations of IWebDriver.

So is there any way I can use IWebDriver and INavigation in conjunction with ISelenium DefaultSelenium ?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '14 at 05:51

As ZloiAdun mentions, there is a lovely new Select class in the OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI namespace. That's one of the best ways to access a selection element and it's options because it's api is so easy. Let's say you've got a web page that looks something like this

<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<title>Disposable Page</title>
</head>
    <body >
        <select id="select">
          <option value="volvo">Volvo</option>
          <option value="saab">Saab</option>
          <option value="mercedes">Mercedes</option>
          <option value="audi">Audi</option>
        </select>
    </body>
</html>

You're code to access the select would look like this. Note how I create the Select object by passing a normal IWebElement to it's constructor. You have plenty of methods on the Select object. Take a look at the source for more information, until it gets properly documented.

using OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI;
using OpenQA.Selenium;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using OpenQA.Selenium.IE;

namespace Selenium2
{
    class SelectExample
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();
            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("www.example.com");

            //note how here's i'm passing in a normal IWebElement to the Select
            // constructor
            Select select = new Select(driver.FindElement(By.Id("select")));
            IList<IWebElement> options = select.GetOptions();
            foreach (IWebElement option in options)
            {
                System.Console.WriteLine(option.Text);
            }
            select.SelectByValue("audi");

            //This is only here so you have time to read the output and 
            System.Console.ReadLine();
            driver.Quit();

        }
    }
}

A couple things to note about the Support class however. Even if you downloaded the latest beta, the support DLL won't be there. The Support package has a relatively long history in the Java libraries (that's where PageObject lives) but it's still pretty fresh in the .Net driver. Fortunately, it's really easy to build from source. I pulled from SVN then referenced the WebDriver.Common.dll from the beta download and built in C# Express 2008. This class hasn't been as well tested as some of the other classes, but my example worked in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

There's a few other things that I should point out based on your code above. Firstly the line you were using to find the select element

driver.FindElements(By.TagName("select"));

is going to find all select elements. you should probably use driver.FindElement, without the 's'.

Also, very rarely would you use INavigation directly. You'll do most of your navigation like driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://example.com");

Lastly, DefaultSelenium is the way to access the older Selenium 1.x apis. Selenium 2 is a pretty significant departure from Selenium 1, so unless you're trying to migrate old tests to the new Selenium 2 api (often referred to as the WebDriver api) you won't use DefaultSelenium.

+1 The `Select` class, as linked by ZloiAdun did the job, but I'm accepting this answer because you provided more information. Since the `Select` is not yet available in the public dll, I'm currently using the class and the exception linked by ZloiAdun. As regards the `FindElements`, I need to use that one because is more than 1 `select` that I want retrieved. Finally, thanks for mentioning the issue as regards `DefaultSelenium`, although I have a follow question to that; Is there any way to make use of the tons of methods that `DefaultSelenium` offers? — Andreas Grech, Jan 12 '11 at 14:43
+1 for clarifying IWebDriver being the way to go with 2.x. Just starting out and most of the demos I could find use DefaultSelenium. — Paul Hadfield, Mar 30 '11 at 08:44

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 11 '11 at 13:48

2

You should get all option elements from your select using ddl.FindElements(By.TagName("option"));. Then you can iterate through the returned collection and select required item(s) by using SetSelected method of the IWebElement

Update: It seems that there's now a C# implementation of the Select in WebDriver - previously it was in Java only. Please take a look at its code and it is easier to use this class

answered Jan 11 '11 at 13:48

Sergii Pozharov

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`IWebElement` does not have a method `SetSelected`. There is a method called `Select` but for my case, it's not doing anything. – Andreas Grech Jan 11 '11 at 14:48
I am not using C#, so I can miss the method names - sorry for that. Have you tried using OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI.Select class? Are you using the Select() on the option of the select? – Sergii Pozharov Jan 11 '11 at 14:59

Using Selenium 2's IWebDriver to interact with elements on the page

2 Answers2

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