70

I have to write tests for a web site. I am trying to get the selected value of a dropdown box. So far i can get the contents of the dropdown by doing

find_field('restrictions__rating_movies').text

returns - Don't Allow Movies G PG M R13 R15 R16 R18 R RP16 Allow All Movies

I can get the value of the selected object.

find_field('restrictions__rating_movies').value

returns - 1000

This does not help me much though because i am trying to get the text of the selected item from a drop down box.

<select class="" id="restrictions__rating_movies" name="restrictions[][rating_movies]">            
<option value="0">Don't Allow Movies</option>
<option value="100">G</option>
<option value="200">PG</option>
<option value="300">M</option>
<option value="325">R13</option>
<option value="350">R15</option>
<option value="375">R16</option>
<option value="400">R18</option>
<option value="500">R</option>
<option value="600">RP16</option>
<option value="1000" selected="selected">Allow All Movies</option></select>

in this case shown i need to get the value 'Allow All Movies' I have tried many different combinations of the above two examples.

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7 Answers 7

Reset to default
163

There's a have_select matcher if you use Capybara with Rspec:

expect(page).to have_select(
  'my-select',         # locator
  selected: 'Option 2' # option
)
Parameters:

Locator (String) (defaults to: nil) — The label, name or id of a select box Options (Hash) using :selected (String, Array) — Options which should be selected

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7 Comments

this answer does not work for me. I get "ArgumentError Exception: invalid keys :selected" (perhaps its deprecated?). The accepted answer from @brandon does.
Perhaps you are using an old version of the gem? The source code for capybara shows usage of this: github.com/jnicklas/capybara/blob/…
Small note for future-explorers: in this example, 'my-select' is the name of the select. Might be clear, but I kept trying to use a class tag :P
assert page.has_select?('my-select', selected: 'Option 2') if minitest instead of rspec
This have_select is really slow when there is a lot of options on the list. I have to used find_field(name).value to make the assertion completed faster.
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45 
find_field('restrictions__rating_movies').find('option[selected]').text
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7 Comments

Slight variation that I prefer find_field('restrictions__rating_movies').should have_content('desired string')
@AshBlue That just ensures 'desired string' is contained in the dropdown's list of options, not that it is actually selected.
If the selection of the option was done in javascript, find('option[selected]') may not work. In this case, it may be possible to use capybara's selected? method like this: find('#restrictions_rating_movies').find(:xpath,"./option[contains(.,'Starwars')]").selected?
I took @LesNightingill's idea, and ended up doing: find("#select_name option[value='something']").should be_selected
This method will not work if you set the value of the select with Javascript. If that's the case, you want to be using the has_select? and has_no_select? methods with the selected option. See rubydoc.info/github/jnicklas/capybara/master/Capybara/Node/….
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16

Very simple way to get value of selected option is:

find("#restrictions__rating_movies").value

This will return selected select option value.

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5 Comments

After trying a lot of variations, this is the one that worked for me. I ended up doing: find("select#my-select").value.should eq('test_value'). I like your approach because (to me) it is simpler and easier to read - which means I'm more likely to remember what it's doing and remember how to do it again later. Thanks!
+1 This seems to fit most naturally with the RSpec expect syntax expect(find("select#my-select").value).to eq 'test_value'
This is also the only option that works with most drivers (selenium, poltergeist, webkit)
This is my favorite answer for readability and you can see exactly what is going on without an unneeded abstraction.
The question is to get the text from the box, not the value of the select.
4

If you only need to assert if a field is selected with a given option, the straightforward answer is

#Find a select box by (label) name or id and assert the given text is selected
When /^select box "([^"]*)" is selected with "([^"]*)"$/ do |dropdown, selected_text|    
  assert page.has_select?(dropdown, selected: selected_text)
end

Source: http://rubydoc.info/github/jnicklas/capybara/master/Capybara/Node/Matchers#has_select%3F-instance_method

But the title of your question is "Get select value for dropdown". And I've run into a similar problem where I would like not only to assert the selection, but also retrieve the text and value of the selected field. I've found no straight way on API. The easiest way I've found was: #all("option").find &:selected?

When /^ select box "([^"]*)" is selected with "([^"]*)"$/ do |dropdown, selected_text|
  sb = find_field(dropdown)
  sb_selected = sb.all("option").find &:selected?
  msg = "Selected: #{sb_selected.text.inspect} - value:#{sb_selected.value.inspect}"
  assert page.has_select?(dropdown, selected: selected_text), msg
end

This gives me a more comprehensive error message when the assertion fails.

If there's multiple selections you can use #select in place of #find, as in #all("option").select &:selected?. It will return an Array.

This answer doesn't rely on the 'option[selected]' trick as the previous ones, so it works even if the selection is done by Javascript (which was the reason why the previous answers didn't work for me at all).

Tested on:

capybara (2.2.1)
capybara-webkit (1.1.0)
cucumber (1.3.14)
cucumber-rails (1.4.0)
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3

If you want to find the current selected text, without assuming what it might be so that you can just compare it to an expectation, the following works even if the selection was made by JS (so that there is no 'option[selected]').

First I find the value of the select, then I find the text of the option with that value:

  def selected(selector)
    value = find(selector).value
    text = find(selector).find("option[value='#{value}']").text
  end
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0

Create a simple function to return the text given a select element (dropdown):

def get_dropdown_selected_item_text(dropdown)
  value = dropdown.value
  return dropdown.all(:css, "option").select {|opt| opt.value == value} .first.text
end
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Comments

-1

Would something like this work?

within("//select[@id='restrictions__rating_movies']") do
  find_field("//option[@selected='selected']").text
end
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3 Comments

That did not work. Here is the error Selenium::WebDriver::Error::InvalidSelectorError: The given selector .////select[@id = 'restrictions__rating_movies'] is either invalid or does not result in a WebElement. The following error occurred: [InvalidSelectorError] Unable to locate an element with the xpath expression .////select[@id = 'restrictions__rating_movies'] because of the following error: [Exception... "The expression is not a legal expression."
How about find("//select option[@selected='selected']") then?
i think you need to pass the xpath specifier, eg. `within(:xpath, 'blah blah')

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