Unable to Select the month of a jquery datepicker using the Selenium - jquery-ui

Question

I am trying to select a custom date in the datepicker present in the jqueryui.com site, it is able to process the year , but the code that i written for the month is not working.Please find the code that i have used:-
private static void PickDate(WebDriver driver, String day, String mon, String year) throws Exception {
while (year != driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-year")).getText())
{
if (Integer.parseInt(year) < Integer.parseInt(driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-year")).getText()))
{
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a.ui-datepicker-prev")).click();
System.out.println(driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-month")).getText());
}
else if (Integer.parseInt(year) > Integer.parseInt(driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-year")).getText()))
{
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a.ui-datepicker-next")).click();
}
}
while (mon != (driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-month")).getText()))
{
if (driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-month")).getText() != "January")
{
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a.ui-datepicker-prev")).click();
}
if (mon != driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-month")).getText())
{
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a.ui-datepicker-next")).click();
}
}

Answer 1

If the purpose is to select a date in the datepicker, I would rather use execute script than click back and forth. :)
Something like:
((JavascriptExecutor) driver).ExecuteScript("$('#datepicker').datepicker('setDate', new Date(year, month, day))")
If you want to click on the previous/next button, then:
Because your code looks quite complicated, so I would like to provide another approach, which I believe that will be much simpler.
Notice that when you click on the previous/next button, it will move forward/backward by 1 month. So it's better if you firstly calculate how many months in difference between the date you want to select (month and year) and the current shown date on the DatePicker.
If you write in java, you can use something like:
YearMonth selectDate = YearMonth.of(year, month); // year, month are integer
int dp_Year = Integer.parseInt(driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("span.ui-datepicker-year")).getText());
int dp_Month = // convert it yourself
YearMonth dp_Date = YearMonth.of(dp_Year, dp_Month);
int month_diff = dp_Date.until(selectDate, ChronoUnit.MONTHS);
Based on month_diff and its sign (+ or -), you will know which button you need to click on and how many times.
I don't have java to try out, but I hope that the code above will work.