selenium webdriver select element - selenium

Question

I have a select control on my site. I am using page objects to interact with the page. If I do (with the first 2 lines under my class and the selectByValue in my method)
#FindBy(id="foo")
private Select foo;
foo.selectByValue("myValue");
It fails with a null pointer. I also tried without the #FindBy.
Now if I do this in my method it all works fine and selects the correct item
Select foo = new Select(sDriver.findElement(By.id("foo")));
foo.selectByValue("myValue");
Here is the actual web snippet for that control (edited to protect the innocent)
<select id="foo" name="service_name">
<option selected="selected" value="one">one</option>
<option value="two">two</option>
<option value="three">three</option>
</select>
Let me say that I have a work around for my issue but I don't get why the "normal" path is not working.

Answer 1

Thats because the Select class has this constructor:
Select(WebElement element)
See the Javadoc
So if you do something like this:
#FindBy(id="foo")
private WebElement wannabeSelect;
Select realSelect = new Select(wannabeSelect);
realSelect.selectByValue("myValue");
It should work.
BTW, I am using the same approach as you in the "workaround" because I dont wanna cast new WebElement object when I need Select object. But anyways, the
sDriver.findElement(By.id("foo"));
returns WebElement, so thats why its working. You can also do this:
WebElement wannabeSelect = sDriver.findElement(By.id("foo"));
Select foo = new Select(wannabeSelect);

Answer 2

There are two ways to select the option value:
One:
// Denotes option value - technical name
select.selectByValue(fieldValue);
Two:
// Denotes option text that is actually visible to be selected
select.selectByVisibleText(fieldValue);

Answer 3

Other way I achieved this is by using below method for all my onchange dropdownselection boxes. Pass id and selection and it works
public void onchangedropdownselection(String object, String value) {
WebElement obj = driver.findElement(By.id(object));
obj.sendKeys(value);
obj.sendKeys(Keys.UP);
obj.sendKeys(Keys.DOWN);
}
By doing up and down we are initialzing the script onchange.......