Select Dropdown Item from "Select" with No ID, Name, or XPATH? - python-3.x

Question

I'm trying to select an item from a drop down menu on a webpage. The select element has no "id", "class" or any other identifier. The div class that it resides under does however. The structure of the element looks like this:
<div class="dropdown_menu_one">
<i>
<select>
<option value="ALL" selected="selected">All Sports</option>
<option value="MLB">MLB</option>
<option value="NBA">NBA</option>
<option value="NFL">NFL</option>
</select>
</i>
</div>
I'm just trying to select, for example, MLB from this dropdown list, but my code isn't working. I found this solution where (theoretically) it tries to select the choice from any select element on the page that has that option, but it's not working for me. Looks like this:
select_element = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//select[option[#value = '%s']]" % "MLB")
select = Select(select_element)
select.select_by_value(sports_selection)
Another added layer of complexity to this is that the xpath constantly changes for this thing too, so I can't rely on just grabbing an xpath or css selector because sometimes it just won't find that element at all on the page. Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

There are couple of alternatives to locate an element even unique attribute not present for it
Strategy: Look surrounding element like parent, child, sibling etc which makes it unique. In your case <select> don't have any attribute but its embedded under a <div> tag which has class attribute so you can use it as given below-
Using xpath : //div[#class='dropdown_menu_one']/i/select or //div[#class='dropdown_menu_one']//select
Even you can locate select based on the option which you are trying. for that first you need to locate the option tag and then have to move to its parent i.e. select. Refer this : //option[contains(.,'All Sports')]/parent::select
Using css selector : div[class='dropdown_menu_one'] select or .dropdown_menu_one>i>select
Using tag name based on the div which contains Select tag :
select_container = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("div.dropdown_menu_one")
select_element = select_container.find_element_by_tag_name("select")
select = Select(select_element)
For more locator strategies please refer this document.

Answer 2

Grab it by css selector like this. Use webdriver waits to let the element load onto the page.
select_element = WebDriverWait(browser, 10).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "div.dropdown_menu_one>i>select")))
select = Select(select_element)
select.select_by_value('MLB')
Import
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC