Selecting Ajax Dropdown suggestion list using Selenium for Firefox - ajax

Question

How can i select Ajax Dropdown suggestion list item using selenium code for firefox??
My problem is :the Ajax dropdown list is visible but it is not selected and next steps gets stuck.
May be selenium is waiting for something.
the list that page populates is dynamic and in bla bla tags.
Please help with a example code.
How can i use waitfor* here.
Remember i am not using firefox ide but i am writing a code.
Please help.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem whereby, selenium was able to find the dropdown menu but was unable to click on the visible text. I later found out that there was an Ajax call that was populating the dropdown menu data and as a result selenium seemed to not be able to select the intended visible text because the list items had not been fully populated. That is, by the time the script was selecting my option value, Ajax had not completely loaded the menu options. Here's my solution:
public void nameOfCollegeList(String optionItem) {
// declare the dropdownMenu web element
WebElement dropDownMenu = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("#CollegeNames"));
// click on the dropdownMenu element to initiate Ajax call
dropDownMenu.click();
// keep checking the drop down menu item list until you find the desired text that indicates that the menu has
// been fully loaded. In this example I always expect "Other (please specify)" to be the last item in the drop down menu.
// If I don't find the expected last item in the list in my if condition, execute the else condition by calling the
// same method(recursively). Please note that if the "if" statement is never satisfied then you'll end up with an
// infinite loop.
if (dropDownMenu.getText().contains("Other (please specify)")) {
new Select(dropDownMenu).selectByVisibleText(optionItem);
}
else {
nameOfCollegeList(optionItem);
}
}

Answer 2

i am little confused with your question at " :the Ajax dropdown list is visible but it is not selected "
this sounds like that the element is disabled. (Java coding)
if so selenium.isElementDisabled()
if not then,
1) programming laguage solution using while loop and isElementPresent() OR isElementDisabled()
//trigger the Ajax request and then
long initialTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
do{
thread.sleep(1000);
}while((!selenium.isElementPresent("AjaxElement")) && (System.getCurrentTimeMillis() - initialTime <= 5000)) ;
//some thing like above for client programming solution...but for,
2) selenium's inbuilt solution
we have a method called waitForCondition("java script to be executed", "time out value");
this method loops the javascript statement until it returns true or the supplied time out occurs
here the important thing is analyzing the application/Ajax element to find out which particular condition of the element changes.
from your explation my guess is this, display=none will be changed to display=block OR
disabled=true will be changed to disabled=false OR isReadOnly will be changed to no such attribute ect.....(you need to figure out this)
and then, use this attribute = value to build a javascript function as ,
selenium.waitForCondition("window.document.getElementById('AJAX ELEMENT').disabled == 'false'", "3000");
you can work out the above statement however you want in your programming language.
try {
//do the action which triggers the Ajax call
selenium.waitForCondition("window.document.getElementById('AJAX ELEMENT[drop down element]').disabled == 'false'", "3000");
//OR
selenium.waitForCondition("window.document.getElementById('AJAX ELEMENT').disabled == 'false'", "3000");
}
catch(SeleniumException se)
{
if((se.getMessage()).toLowerCase().contains("timed out")
throw //..some a custom exception however your organisation requires
}
selenium.select("drop down element id", "option id");
and so on.....