How to select an option from a drop-down using Selenium WebDriver with Java?

Question

I need to select a category from the below html. I tried different options, and different ways showed in the blogs, but not able to select the options. Any help will be appreciated.

One way I am using as (Not a better one)

private boolean select_dropdown_xpath(String value, String seleniumObjectValue) {
    try {
        boolean isListItemFound = false;
        int i = 0;

        do {
            i++;
            String category = driver.findElement(By.xpath(seleniumObjectValue+"/div["+ i +"]")).getText();
            if(category.equals(value)) {
                driver.findElement(By.xpath(seleniumObjectValue+"/div["+ i +"]")).click();
                isListItemFound = true;
            }
        } while (isListItemFound == false);

        if(!(isListItemFound)) {
            return false;
        }               

    } catch(Exception e) {
        return false;
    }

    return true;
}

Tool: Selenium WebDriver 2.28 with Java

Thanks Purna

HTML:

<div class="drop-down">
    <div class="label_field">
        <label>Category:</label>
        <fieldset>
            <div id="Ccategory" class="jSym_select_element jSym_pie jSym_noSelectText false hover" tabindex="0" textval="Default" style="width: 350px;">
                <div class="jSym_drop_arrow false"/>
                <div class="jSym_select_inner false">Default</div>
            </div>
        <div id="selectDrop" class="jSym_select_drop jSym_noSelectText " style="height: 50px; width: 350px; margin-top: 10px;">
            <div class="jSym_select_item jSym_noSelectText" optionval="Default">Default</div>
            <div class="jSym_select_item jSym_noSelectText" optionval="Reset">Reset</div>
        </div>
            <select id="select_category" class="jSym_dropdown" name="category" style="visibility: hidden;">
                <option value="Default">Default</option>
                <option value="Reset">Reset</option>
            </select>
        </fieldset>
    </div>
</div>

Answer 1

Try this code:

Select sele = new Select(driver.findElement(By.id("select_category")));

//Select the dropdown by using the displayed value.
sele.selectByVisibleText(`displayed value`);

//or you can Select the dropdown by using the index value.
sele.selectByIndex(`index value`);

 //or you can Select the dropdown by using the value attribute.
sele.selectByIndex(`value in the value attribute`);

In your case the dropdown visibility is hidden. So, first make it as visible by using JavaScript Executor class. Then use the above code.