Question

I am using the bootstrap Dropdown component in my application like this:

<div class="btn-group">
    <button class="btn">Please Select From List</button>
    <button class="btn dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">
        <span class="caret"></span>
    </button>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu" role="menu" aria-labelledby="dropdownMenu">
       <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">Item I</a></li>
       <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">Item II</a></li>
       <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">Item III</a></li>
       <li class="divider"></li>
       <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">Other</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

I would like to display the selected item as the btn label. In other words, replace “Please Select From List” with the list item that has been selected(“Item I”, “Item II”, “Item III”).

Answer 1

As far as i understood your issue is that you want to change the text of the button with the clicking linked text, if so you can try this one: http://jsbin.com/owuyix/4/edit

 $(function(){

    $(".dropdown-menu li a").click(function(){

      $(".btn:first-child").text($(this).text());
      $(".btn:first-child").val($(this).text());

   });

});

---

As per your comment:

this doesn’t work for me when I have lists item <li> populated through ajax call.

so you have to delegate the event to the closest static parent with .on() jQuery method:

 $(function(){

    $(".dropdown-menu").on('click', 'li a', function(){
      $(".btn:first-child").text($(this).text());
      $(".btn:first-child").val($(this).text());
   });

});

Here event is delegated to static parent $(".dropdown-menu"), although you can delegate the event to the $(document) too because it is always available.