Get drop down value

Question

How to determine what is selected in the drop down? In Javascript.

• Crescent Fresh: possible duplicate of how to get selected value of dropdownlist using javascript?
• kurdtpage: It's usually quite helpful if you include some code in your questions

Answer 1

If your dropdown is something like this:

<select id="thedropdown">
 <option value="1">one</option>
 <option value="2">two</option>
</select>

Then you would use something like:

var a = document.getElementById("thedropdown");
alert(a.options[a.selectedIndex].value);

But a library like jQuery simplifies things:

alert($('#thedropdown').val());

• cambraca: I'm digging deep in my memory here, but I think a.value didn't work in some browsers (probably IE 6, haha). Anyway, using a library is best.
• casablanca: It works on all browsers that I know of, including IE6. (just tested)
• cambraca: It happened in very old browsers like Netscape Navigator 4. Look

Answer 2

Use the value property of the <select> element. For example:

var value = document.getElementById('your_select_id').value;
alert(value);

Answer 3

<select onchange = "selectChanged(this.value)">
 <item value = "1">one</item>
 <item value = "2">two</item>
</select>

and then the javascript...

function selectChanged(newvalue) {
 alert("you chose: " + newvalue);
}

Answer 4

var dd = document.getElementById("dropdownID");
var selectedItem = dd.options[dd.selectedIndex].value;

Answer 5

Like this:

$dd = document.getElementById("yourselectelementid");
$so = $dd.options[$dd.selectedIndex];