WebDriver C# - Selecting an item from a drop down list using partial text

Question

I am writing a WebDriver test case in C# where I need to select an item in a drop down list.

The text on the dropdown will be a persons name followed by distance and capacity. The problem is that only the first section of the text displayed is known at runtime, ie the persons name. If this were a link I could click on it using the following fairly standard code:

driver.FindElements(By.Id("Name")).Click();

But alas it is not a link. I have copied the definition of the SelectByText() method from SelectElement class in OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI below. Or more specifically the comments from the definition relating to substring/partial text matches in the SelectByText() method:

// Parameters:
//   text:
//     The text of the option to be selected. If an exact match is not found, this
//     method will perform a substring match.

I can't get the method to perform a substring match .

This is what I have tried. For example my HTML code is similar to this:

<select id="ddlTest">
   <option>Firstname Lastname - 35 miles - 50%</option>
</select>

I have tried the following C# Webdriver which didn't find the substring match I was expecting.

var selectList = driver.FindElement(By.Id("ddlTest"));
var options = new SelectElement(selectList);
options.SelectByText("Firstname Lastname");

And that is where the test fails as it couldn't find an element with the text Firstname Lastname .

How do I get this method to use the substring match it describes in the definition comments I copied above?

Answer 1

selectList.FindElement(By.XPath(string.Format("./option[starts-with(text(), '{0}')]", "Firstname Lastname"))).Click();

Answer 2

Not tested but should work for you

By byXpath = By.XPath("//select[@id='ddlTest']/option[contains(text(),'Firstname Lastname')]");
driver.FindElement(byXpath).Click();