How to identify an element whose id is dynamically changing and has no other attributes in selenium? - selenium

Question

I've this html body for a kendo dropdown list which has only one attribute i.e. id which is dynamically changing, how do i identify this object on every page refresh accurately.
other attributes like class and tab index already are present with same values multiple times on the same page for other dropdowns-
<span role="listbox" unselectable="on" class="k-dropdown-wrap k-state-default" id="dde13a91-2bf3-4e41-af72-bee1b881a8d9" dir="ltr" readonly="false" tabindex="0" aria-disabled="false" aria-readonly="false" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false" aria-owns="48f666d8-4c3c-43a8-a4dc-8e7a9961a0ef" aria-activedescendant="ca3c4431-3ebf-46c0-9510-a64a32eae108-C.US.0000110896">
<span unselectable="on" class="k-input">
<!---->
<!---->2018 ALBERTSONS / Beverage Mixes
</span>
<span unselectable="on" class="k-select">
<span class="k-i-arrow-s k-icon"></span>
</span>
<!---->
</span>

Answer 1

If there is a always present value in dropdown, You can try to find this value by text or something, and then get a parent:
XPath: Get parent node from child node
Other way is to get it by xpath of structure, like: div[3]/.../span etc. It is not good as every change can fail Your test, but if You have no other options, then You might want to try this.

Answer 2

To click on the element with the only attribute-text as 2018 ALBERTSONS / Beverage Mixes you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element to be clickable and you can use the following solution:
(Java) xpath:
new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//span[#class='k-dropdown-wrap k-state-default' and #role='listbox']//span[#class='k-input']"))).click();

Answer 3

I found a workaround to locate the element:
First get the xpath of the span tag inside the dropdown using it's text as below:
//text()[contains(.,'2018 ')]
since '2018 ' is common irrespective of adjacent text
Then move up to the parent tag of the dropdown to locate the dropdown frame which can be collapsed on click:
//text()[contains(.,'2018 ')]/parent::/parent::
then simply click on the element which is located.
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//text()[contains(.,'2018 ')]/parent::/parent::")).click();