Handling Dynamic Dropdown in Playwright

Earlier we discussed the Playwright selectOption method to handle the basic <select> dropdown in Playwright. The selectOption method throws an error if the target element is not a <select> element. In this article, let's discuss how to handle dynamic dropdowns or select an option when the select option is not available.

Table of Content

1. Select from Bootstrap Dropdown
2. Select from Angular Dropdown
3. Video Tutorial

Example 1: Select from Bootstrap Dropdown

Let's select the country India from the bootstrap country dropdown here.

Step 1: Open the Dropdown by clicking on the <button> in <div> containing class bootstrap-select.

await page.locator('button.dropdown-toggle').click()

Step 2: All countries are in <li> inside parent <ul>. Locate the <ul> first.

.locator('ul.dropdown-menu')

Step 3: Locate all the <li>.

.locator('li')

Step 4: Filter for India text using filter method and hasText option and click using click method.

.filter({ hasText:/^India$/}).click()

Code:

test('country dropdown', async ({page}) =>{
        await page.goto('http://autopract.com/selenium/dropdown4/')
        await page.locator('button.dropdown-toggle').click()
        
        await page
            .locator('ul.dropdown-menu')
            .locator('li')
            .filter({ hasText:/^India$/})
            .click();
})

The hasText matches the containing text. For an exact match, use regular expression using a starting and ending forward slash(/) and removing the quotes ('). Also, Use starts with (^) and ends with the ($) symbol.

Example 2: Select from Angular Dropdown

Let's select the color from the dropdown in the header here. You can also install ngx-admin application on local. Make sure you select any theme to view dropdown.

await page.locator("img[alt='Material Light Theme']").click()

Step 1: Open the Dropdown by clicking on the <button> in <nb-select> 

 await page.locator('div.header-container>nb-select>button').click()

Step 2: All countries are in <nb-option> inside parent <ul>. Locate the <ul> first.

await page.locator('ul.option-list')

Step 3: Locate all the <nb-option>.

.locator('nb-option')

Step 4: Filter for Corporate text using filter method and hasText option and click using click method.

.filter({ hasText:/^Corporate$/}).click();

Code:

test.only('ngx dropdown', async ({page}) =>{
    await page.goto('https://www.akveo.com/ngx-admin')
    await page.locator("img[alt='Material Light Theme']").click()

    await page.locator('div.header-container>nb-select>button').click()
    
    await page
        .locator('ul.option-list')
        .locator('nb-option')
        .filter({ hasText:/^Corporate$/})
        .click();
})

The Corporate option starts with space use (/s) in the regular expression.