Question

I have a dropdown box, It has no values in them. I have to set it preselected with a value available in a variable. This is what I have done but it does not set this value.

if(condition)
{
    var selectedVal = "myValue";                
    $("#myDropDownId").val(selectedVal);
}

as per info from google, the above one works when there are options already available in the dropdown.

I tried with the below as well

if(condition)
{
    var selectedVal = "myValue";                
    $("#myDropDownId option:selected").val(selectedVal);
 }  

What is the correct syntax for this please?

Answer 1

The code in your first example is the correct method and should work fine; see this fiddle.

Are you using Firefox? If so, don’t forget it keeps the state of a form on refresh, and does not pick the default values. Try pressing CTRL+F5 to force it to completely refresh the page and reset the form to initial defaults.