Question

Given a select with multiple option’s in jQuery.

$select = $('<select></select>'); $select.append('<option>Jason</option>') //Key = 1        .append('<option>John</option>') //Key = 32        .append('<option>Paul</option>') //Key = 423 

How should the key be stored and retrieved?

The ID may be an OK place but would not be guaranteed unique if I had multiple select’s sharing values (and other scenarios).

Thanks

and in the spirit of TMTOWTDI.

$option = $('<option></option>'); $select = $('<select></select>'); $select.addOption = function(value,text){     $(this).append($('<option/>').val(value).text(text)); };  $select.append($option.val(1).text('Jason').clone())        .append('<option value=32>John</option>')        .append($('<option/>').val(423).text('Paul'))        .addOption('321','Lenny'); 

Answer 1

Like lucas said the value attribute is what you need. Using your code it would look something like this ( I added an id attribute to the select to make it fit ):

$select = $('<select id='mySelect'></select>'); $select.append('<option value='1'>Jason</option>') //Key = 1    .append('<option value='32'>John</option>') //Key = 32    .append('<option value='423'>Paul</option>') //Key = 423 

jQuery lets you get the value using the val() method. Using it on the select tag you get the current selected option’s value.

$( '#mySelect' ).val(); //Gets the value for the current selected option  $( '#mySelect > option' ).each( function( index, option ) {     option.val(); //The value for each individual option } ); 

Just in case, the .each method loops throught every element the query matched.