Question

I have a form with a select box whose options are pre selected by ajax according to a previous value entered by the user.

I need to add text to these options pre selected ONLY.

for (i in data) {
        $("#my_select_box_id").val(data[i][0]).attr('selected',true);
        var id_option = data[i][0];

        //this following line doesn't work, why do I do wrong here ?
        $("#my_select_box_id option[value="id_option"]).html(data[i][1]);
}

Answer 1

Use the :selected selector if you want currently selected options.

$("#my_select_box_id option:selected")

Your code didn’t work because you were prematurely closing the selector string instead of concatenating. This results in an error.

$("#my_select_box_id option[value='" + id_option + "']");

Also, the attribute selector should only work on attributes. I don’t know about jQuery though because they’ve historically diminished the distinction between properties an attributes. So it depends if .attr() is actually setting the attribute of the property.