How to select and deselect element from a drop down list in selenium webdriver

We need to select element from a drop down list in our test automation. Selenium webdriver has given us a class called “Select”.
There are three ways you can select and deselect an element. You can select element by value, by index and by visible text.

By value:
For selecting a element,

WebElement element = driver.findElement(locator);
Select selectData=new Select(element);
selectData.deselectAll();
selectData.selectByValue(value);

Here

locator is the element locator. it may be tagname, xpath, id etc.

selectData is the Select object.

value is the value of the data. you can take help from firebug to detect this element.

For deselecting an element,

WebElement element = driver.findElement(locator);
Select selectData=new Select(element);
selectData.deselectByValue(value);

By Index:
For selecting an element,

WebElement element = driver.findElement(locator);
Select selectData=new Select(element);
selectData.deselectAll();
selectData.selectByIndex(index);

Here index index of the list.

For deselecting an element,

WebElement element = driver.findElement(locator);
Select selectData=new Select(element);
selectData.deselectByIndex(index);

By Visible Text:
Here we select an element by using the visible data in the list. For example, we have a dropdown box that contain two element “Male” and “Female” as a visible element in the list. We use this two text to select.
For selecting an element,

WebElement element = driver.findElement(locator);
Select selectData=new Select(element);
selectData.deselectAll();
selectData.selectByVisibleText(visibleText);

Here visible text is the text found at drop down list.

For deselecting an element,

WebElement element = driver.findElement(locator);
Select selectData=new Select(element);
selectData.deselectByVisibleText(visibleText);

N.B : All codes are used here in Java.