Question

I have a returned JSON string which I have parsed and put through into an array and then formatted to put into a select dropdown list:

   function populateGroups(){
        var categories = '';
        for( category in gCategories ){
            categories += '<option name="' + gCategories[category] + '">' + gCategories[category] + '</option>';
            categories.replace(' ', '_');
        }
        $('select[name="category"]').html(categories);    
    }

The problem I have is that the option names (which are the same as the values) contain spaces which I need to replace with something that would be valid, such as an underscore ‘_’.

That is why I have tried doing the categories.replace(‘ ‘, ‘_’); I have also tried doing this with regex, although my RegEx is not very good 😛

Any ideas on how this would be done?

Thanks!

[Note]
Here is the JSFiddle : http://jsfiddle.net/pKYr4/

Answer 1

You should update the string as well;

categories = categories.replace(/ /g, '_');

…a problem though is that not just the values are formated/trimmed as <option name="... will be affected as well.

<option_name="category_value">category_value</option>

This can be solved this way;

function populateGroups() {
    var categories = '';
    for( c in gCategories ) {
        var categoryValue = gCategories[c].replace(/ /g, '_');
        categories += '<option name="' + categoryValue + '">' + gCategories[c] + '</option>';
    }
    $('select[name="category"]').html(categories);    
}