Selenium: How to select an option from a select menu?

Question

I am writing a Selenium test in PHP using the PHPUnit Selenium extension.

I know how to type something into a text field:

$this->type('fieldName', 'value');

But how do I select an option from a drop-down menu?

Answer 1

To expand on the other (accurate) answers, you can select based on the label, value, id, or index of the options. From the official reference available at http://release.seleniumhq.org/selenium-core/1.0/reference.html:

select(selectLocator, optionLocator)

Arguments:

• selectLocator - an element locator identifying a drop-down menu
• optionLocator - an option locator (a label by default)

Select an option from a drop-down using an option locator.

Option locators provide different ways of specifying options of an HTML Select element (e.g. for selecting a specific option, or for asserting that the selected option satisfies a specification). There are several forms of Select Option Locator.

• label=labelPattern: matches options based on their labels, i.e. the visible text. (This is the default.)
  • label=regexp:^[Oo]ther
• value=valuePattern: matches options based on their values.
  • value=other
• id=id: matches options based on their ids.
  • id=option1
• index=index: matches an option based on its index (offset from zero).
  • index=2

If no option locator prefix is provided, the default behaviour is to match on label.