Drop Down-No Chid Item Exists

[BalakrishnaG]

Hi All, . We have a drop down list in Ariba Web Application in that we have to select item based on the request. we have used  'Navigate' stage which selects a value from a HTML Dropdown box. The value actually selects  successfully but Blue Prism thinks for some reason that it has failed by throwing the exception "No child item exists with the specified text". The exception is thrown out of the navigate stage.   Please suggest Thanks, Bala    

[DaveMorris]

Hi Bala, Does it still throw an error if you select using the Item Number (row number) instead of using the text? I haven't run into the same issue you described, so I'm mostly suggesting this as a workaround. I have found some odd issues when trying to select items from dropdowns and I've found that a solid alternative (when selecting by Text doesn't work) is to retrieve all the items from the list first, loop through that in a Blue Prism collection to find the row number of the item I want to select, and then select the item based on the item number rather than the text. It's a workaround, but it's worth considering as an option. Dave

[BalakrishnaG]

Hi Dave,   Yes its still throws an error even if i select  the item number. And in my Collection am getting the whole data(All Items) in one row. please find the attachment for your reference. when I Open 3rd row whole data (Items) are available in that row only. when I use AA  mode then blue prism automatically crashes.   Please suggest. Thanks, Bala.

[VIGNESHS2]

Hi Bala, If The Value from Drop-down highlights correctly , then only issue is fix the match index part in Application modular.   Thanks vignesh.s

[DaveMorris]

Bala, Two things I'd try: Try spying a different part of the dropdown box (there is often a container element and an element within the container, both of which are recognized as dropdown inputs but only one of them will work for actions like Select Item. Try directly writing the value rather than using Select Item. You may need to validate before using write to ensure that it's a valid choice in the dropdown (but it looks you can do that with InStr on the data you retrieve out of the dropdown element. Dave

[BalakrishnaG]

Dave, Yes we have tried to write the data instead of selecting the item in Drop Down. but its not updating when we are navigating to other page.. its like we have to click on the drop down item then only it will update... When we spy the drop down, by default the element type is not a ""HTML Combo Box"" in the Attributes it is only an ""HTML Element""... we have changed manually to ""HTML Combo box"" then in navigate stage we took action as ""get all items."" If we use Region Mode(List Region) there are about 200 items are there in drop down.   I tried different part of the drop down box..   

[DaveMorris]

Yeah, changing the element type (for me at least) usually doesn't solve the issue. That makes sense that you'd get the error you're getting. Blue Prism will let you use a navigate stage to try selecting items in a combo box if you manually changed the element type but then you'll get errors. If it doesn't work to spy a different part of the drop down box (not sure if you're saying you already tried it or still intend to try it), then you may need to attempt some Send Keys where you try things like clicking the dropdown box, sending the down arrow key, reading the value, and then looping if it's not the value you want, etc.

[XianglingLiu]

Hi Bala, Have you solved the issue? I faced the same issue just now.  

[AyshaM]

Hi Bala, Have you solved the issue? I am facing exactly the same issue of it not being recognized as a combo element and hence not able to select.

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Aysha M
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[michaeloneil]

Hi Bala

If you are still having an issue with this selection the item using text or position or both then I would suggest using a dynamic path to select the item you need. This is done by changing the path in application model to dynamic and this way you can edit it in a data item and pass it as a parameter of a read action. For example the path might look something like this /HTML/BODY(1)/DIV(19)/DIV(2)/DIV(1)/DIV(2)/FORM(1)/TABLE(1)/TBODY(1)/TR(1)/TD(2), generally you only need to change the row using a calculation stage /HTML/BODY(1)/DIV(19)/DIV(2)/DIV(1)/DIV(2)/FORM(1)/TABLE(1)/TBODY(1)/TR([RowCount])/TD(2). After you set this use a read stage with the drop down element and set the parameter in here with the path data item.

Using a decision match the value you are looking for the value read if it matches select that item using a navigate and setting path data item as the parameter. If they don't then increase the row count and edit the path with a multi calculation stage and retry the read. Important to remember to limit the number of time this iterates, if you know the number of items in the drop down list using a decision to check if the row count is greater than that number and if so then end or throw exception otherwise you'll end up in an infinite loop. Example diagram below

I hope this was helpful 🙂

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Michael ONeil
Technical Lead developer
Everis Consultancy
Europe/London
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