JavaScript Forum

**funkdaddu** · 06-13-2005, 01:45 PM

I'm trying to get the name (visible text) of the selected option in the drop down... I'm not sure why it's not working. I can get the value, but not the name:

HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>

	<head>
		<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
		<title>Untitled Page</title>
		<script type="text/javascript"><!--
function show() {
alert(document.getElementById('series').name + " : " + document.getElementById('series').value);
}
//-->
</script>
	</head>

	<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
		<p><select id="series" size="1">
				<option value="one">first</option>
				<option value="two">second</option>
				<option value="three">third</option>
			</select><input type="submit" name="submitButtonName" onclick="show();"></p>
	</body>

</html>

**chrishirst** · 06-13-2005, 02:37 PM

be nice if it were that simple. options does'nt have a "name" property. it is the text property of the selected option you need. So;

Code:

function show() {
var sel_opt = document.getElementById('series').options.selectedIndex;
alert(document.getElementById('series').options[sel_opt].text + " : " + document.getElementById('series').value);
}

you've just got to love javascript for it's nice clean use of OOP syntax. NOT!

it could of course be written as

Code:

alert(document.getElementById('series').options[document.getElementById('series').options.selectedIndex].text + " : " + document.getElementById('series').value);

if you want to be truly convoluted.

btw the code box breaks "selectedIndex" it should be a single word.

**funkdaddu** · 06-13-2005, 02:48 PM

Kinda weird that you can grab the value and not the name/text without identifying the selected option by number. But I got it. Thanks.

**chrishirst** · 06-13-2005, 03:00 PM

It's all down to the nature of OOP.

the <option>s are child objects of <select> so you need to reference the child object array properties from the parent object.

it almost makes C++ look simple