Selecting an option from dropdown form fields with Mechanize

Mechanize works great for uploading data through forms: it has great support for manipulating text fields, check boxes, and so on. Selecting the appropriate option from a dropdown is slightly more roundabout.

Mechanize supports only selecting options by their value, so if you know only the text label you want to select, you’ll need to iterate through the options first with a function link this:

  
  
    def select_option(form, field_id, text)
  value = nil
  form.field_with(:id => field_id).options.each{|o| value = o if o.text == text }
    
  raise ArgumentError, "No option with text '#{text}' in field '#{field_id}'" unless value
  form.field_with(:id => field_id).value = value
end
  
  

With this function in your code, you can now get Mechanize to select dropdown values with

  
  
    new_hotel_page.form_with(:method => ‘POST’) do |f|
  select_option(f, ‘hotel_location_id’, location_name)
end.submit
  
  

As I said, this requires slightly more code than simply entering data in a text field, but it works fine.

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