Education Ecosystem Blog

 
How to recover in JavaScript, the value of an option in a dropdown list? Before anything else, we must remember that we can retrieve different information from that option. Let´s take a look at the terminology used to name different things related to an option.

Consider the example below:

<Select>
<option value="Hello">Hello World</ Option>
</ Select>

The above option has the following information:

• Index = 0
• Value = Hello
• Text = Hello World

JavaScript – How to recover the value of a selected option in a dropdown list

Keeping in mind what we stated above, we know that we can recover the index, the value or text. If you have the example below:

<select id="DdlViewBy">
<option  value  =  "1"  >  test1  </ Option>
<option value="2" selected="Selected">test2</ Option>
<option  value  =  "3"  >  test3  </ Option>
</ Select>

When running the following code:

var e = document.getElementById ("DdlViewBy");
var strUser = e.options [e.selectedIndex] .value;

The return would be the value 2.

If we want to recover the text of the option selected, the following code can be used:

var  e = document.getElementById (  "DdlViewBy"  );
var  strUser = e.options [e.selectedIndex] .text;

And the returned value would be test2.
 

JavaScript – Using jQuery

If you can use jQuery, this operation becomes simpler. The code to retrieve the value or text of the selected option can be created following the model below:

$ ("# DdlViewBy: selected") .text (); // The text content of the selected option$ ("# DdlViewBy") .val (); // The value of the selected option

These are the ways we had to share this article. Do you know other ways to do this operation in JavaScript?  Share your comments in the section below!

If you want to explore other questions, you can check LCTV videos on JavaScript. Below are some examples:

• Freecodecamping

• Webapp

You can also subscribe to some channels that broadcast in JavaScript, such as the following:

Michaeljcalkins

Rdegges

Another cool way to find out interesting things about JavaScript is to access our project page!