Selecting a <option> in a <select> with a given value.

April 30, 2010 by paulhenry · Comments Off
Filed under: Javascript Tutorials, Tutorials 

Have you ever needed to auto-select a specific <option> in a <select> with PHP but didn’t want to generate the whole <select> or go through a complex selecting process?

Here is some Javascript code that will set the first <option> of a <select> with a given value to selected.


function selectItem(name, value) {
  if(value == "") {
    return;
  }
  var selectElement = document.getElementById(name);

  var options = selectElement.getElementsByTagName('option');

  for(var i = 0; i < options.length; i++) {
    if(options[i].value == value) {
    options[i].selected = true;

    return;
    }
  }

  return;
}

Say you had the following select, and you wanted to select a certain element say if the something went wrong when the user submited the form. You could call the above function to select the state of Texas like so: selectItem("states", "TX"). The first argument is the id of the select, and the second is the value you want to select.

<select name="State" id="states">
  <option value="" selected="selected">Select a State</option>
  <option value="AL">Alabama</option>
  <option value="AK">Alaska</option>
  <option value="AZ">Arizona</option>
  <option value="AR">Arkansas</option>
  <option value="CA">California</option>
  <option value="CO">Colorado</option>
  <option value="CT">Connecticut</option>
  <option value="DE">Delaware</option>
  <option value="DC">District Of Columbia</option>
  <option value="FL">Florida</option>
  <option value="GA">Georgia</option>
  <option value="HI">Hawaii</option>
  <option value="ID">Idaho</option>
  <option value="IL">Illinois</option>
  <option value="IN">Indiana</option>
  <option value="IA">Iowa</option>
  <option value="KS">Kansas</option>
  <option value="KY">Kentucky</option>
  <option value="LA">Louisiana</option>
  <option value="ME">Maine</option>
  <option value="MD">Maryland</option>
  <option value="MA">Massachusetts</option>
  <option value="MI">Michigan</option>
  <option value="MN">Minnesota</option>
  <option value="MS">Mississippi</option>
  <option value="MO">Missouri</option>
  <option value="MT">Montana</option>
  <option value="NE">Nebraska</option>
  <option value="NV">Nevada</option>
  <option value="NH">New Hampshire</option>
  <option value="NJ">New Jersey</option>
  <option value="NM">New Mexico</option>
  <option value="NY">New York</option>
  <option value="NC">North Carolina</option>
  <option value="ND">North Dakota</option>
  <option value="OH">Ohio</option>
  <option value="OK">Oklahoma</option>
  <option value="OR">Oregon</option>
  <option value="PA">Pennsylvania</option>
  <option value="RI">Rhode Island</option>
  <option value="SC">South Carolina</option>
  <option value="SD">South Dakota</option>
  <option value="TN">Tennessee</option>
  <option value="TX">Texas</option>
  <option value="UT">Utah</option>
  <option value="VT">Vermont</option>
  <option value="VA">Virginia</option>
  <option value="WA">Washington</option>
  <option value="WV">West Virginia</option>
  <option value="WI">Wisconsin</option>
  <option value="WY">Wyoming</option>
</select>

Hope this helps! :)

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