How to select a specific option from drop-down list?

January 10, 2022 10:06
Updated

You are browsing a tutorial guide for the latest Octoparse version. If you are running an older version of Octoparse, we strongly recommend you upgrade because it is faster, easier and more robust! Download and upgrade here if you haven't already done so!

It happens quite often to extract data from a drop-down list. Sometimes you need to get all the options on the list. Sometimes, you might just need one or several specific options. This tutorial will show you how to select whichever option on the list.

In short, writing the correct XPath is the fastest way to locate the right option. Let's use an example to show you how to do it.

You may want to use this example link to follow through:

https://www.zazo.de/eliquids/zazo/493/zazo-5-1-gratis-paket-10ml-flaschen

Here is a drop-down list and it contains a lot of options.

Let's loop through all the options in the dropdown menu first

Click on the dropdown menu and choose Loop through the options in the dropdown menu on the tips panel

You will see the default XPath of the Loop item is //form[@class="buybox--form"]/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/select[1]/OPTION

As you can see, there are 299 items inside the drop-down list.

To suit our needs, we need to modify the XPath for the Loop Item.

1. Choose a specific option by its index

For example, if we want to select the 5th option which is "Ananas 12mg", the correct XPath should be :

//form[@class="buybox--form"]/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/select[1]/OPTION[5]

Just adding [X] to the end of the XPath to choose the option you want. If you replace the default XPath with the new one, you will see the 5th option appear.

2. Choose a specific option by its text

If we want to select all options containing "Banana", the correct XPath should be:

//form[@class="buybox--form"]/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/select[1]/OPTION[contains(text(),'Banana')]

Using the syndex "contains" can help you to select the option that contains specific text.

3. Choose a specific option by its position

If we want to select all the options except the 1st one, the correct XPath should be:

//form[@class="buybox--form"]/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/select[1]/OPTION[position()>1]

We could use ">","=",'<' after “position()” to adjust according to our needs.

If we want to select only the last option, the right XPath is:

//form[@class="buybox--form"]/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/select[1]/OPTION[last()]

Tip: If you want to check whether the XPath you modified works well or not in Octoparse, you need to click Apply to save first, click another action in the workflow, and then click Loop Item again.

Author: Joy

Editor: Yina

1. Choose a specific option by its index

2. Choose a specific option by its text

3. Choose a specific option by its position

Related articles