Question

I have a select dropdownlist with 1 item selected at page load in html.

<select name = "options">
  <option value = "1">Item1</option>
  <option value = "2" selected>Item2</option>
  <option value = "3">Item3</option>
  <option value = "4">Item4</option>
</select>

Now I want to capture new select option when user press shift and select another option such as “Item 3”.

I have the following code to find all the selections in the list

 var value = "";
 for (var intLoop = 0; intLoop < Form.elements[index].length; intLoop++) {

     if(Form.elements[index][intLoop].selected )
             value = value + Form.elements[index][intLoop].value;
 }

I can see the “Item 2” and “Item 3” are selected but i want to get capture “Item 3” only. Is it possible?

Answer 1

Here’s code that will tell you what has been selected and what has been deselected http://jsfiddle.net/8dWzB/

It uses Array.prototype.indexOf, and it’s not the fastest way to do it. But it should get you going in the right direction.

HTML

<select id="options" multiple="multiple">
  <option value = "1">Item1</option>
  <option value = "2" selected>Item2</option>
  <option value = "3">Item3</option>
  <option value = "4">Item4</option>
</select>

JS

function getSelectedIndexes(select) {
   var selected = [];
   for (var i = 0; i  < select.options.length; i++) {
       if(select.options[i].selected ) {
            selected.push(i);
       }
   }
   return selected;
}

var select = document.getElementById("options");
var prevSelected = getSelectedIndexes(select);

select.onchange = function(e) {
    var currentlySelected = getSelectedIndexes(this);

    for (var i =0; i < currentlySelected.length; i++) {
        if (prevSelected.indexOf(currentlySelected[i]) == -1) {
            console.log("Added to selection ", this.options[currentlySelected[i]].text);
        }
    }

    for (var i =0; i < prevSelected.length; i++) {
        if (currentlySelected.indexOf(prevSelected[i]) == -1) {
            console.log("Removed from selection  ", this.options[prevSelected[i]].text);
        }
    }        
    prevSelected = currentlySelected;
};
​

If you really only want to know which item was last clicked, you can use the following code. I’ll use jQuery so I can easily set a handler on all the option objects. Remember this won’t work if you change the selection with the keyboard

    $('option').click(function(e){
        var parentNode = this.parentNode;
        for (var i=0; i < this.parentNode.options.length; i++) {
            if (parentNode.options[i] == this) {
              console.log('Clicked item with index', i);
              break;
            }
        }
    });