Question

I have a page that gets values from a DB, I can’t control the values / how they are called, but the end result looks like standard HTML code, for example:

<div id="myDiv" class="controls">
    <select id="jform_province" name="jform[province]">
        <option value="AB">Alberta</option>
        <option value="BC">British Columbia</option>
        <option value="MB">Manitoba</option>
    </select>
</div>

I’m looking to put a script at the end of the page that can modify the option elements by say adding a function so it looks like this:

<option value="AB" onClick="someFunction()">Alberta</option>

How can I modify the code? I know how to edit the entire content of the div but I want to change the elements, I will not know what the values of the elements are so the script needs to find all option tags in “myDiv” (I have other lists on the page I don’t want changed) and add that code to all of them.

Thanks

Answer 1

Just attach an event handler:

document.getElementById('jform_province').onchange = function() {
  switch(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value) {
    case "AB": someFunction(); break;
    // define other cases as needed
  }
};

Note that <option> elements do not fire onclick events when selected, and even if they did it wouldn’t detect alternate input methods such as using the keyboard. The code above provides an alternative.