Question

I want this javascript to create options from 12 to 100 in a select with id=”mainSelect”, because I do not want to create all of the option tags manually. Can you give me some pointers? Thanks

function selectOptionCreate() {

  var age = 88;
  line = "";
  for (var i = 0; i < 90; i++) {
    line += "<option>";
    line += age + i;
    line += "</option>";
  }

  return line;
}

Answer 1

You could achieve this with a simple for loop:

var min = 12,
    max = 100,
    select = document.getElementById('selectElementId');

for (var i = min; i<=max; i++){
    var opt = document.createElement('option');
    opt.value = i;
    opt.innerHTML = i;
    select.appendChild(opt);
}

JS Fiddle demo.

JS Perf comparison of both mine and Sime Vidas’ answer, run because I thought his looked a little more understandable/intuitive than mine and I wondered how that would translate into implementation. According to Chromium 14/Ubuntu 11.04 mine is somewhat faster, other browsers/platforms are likely to have differing results though.

---

Edited in response to comment from OP:

[How] do [I] apply this to more than one element?

function populateSelect(target, min, max){
    if (!target){
        return false;
    }
    else {
        var min = min || 0,
            max = max || min + 100;

        select = document.getElementById(target);

        for (var i = min; i<=max; i++){
            var opt = document.createElement('option');
            opt.value = i;
            opt.innerHTML = i;
            select.appendChild(opt);
        }
    }
}
// calling the function with all three values:
populateSelect('selectElementId',12,100);

// calling the function with only the 'id' ('min' and 'max' are set to defaults):
populateSelect('anotherSelect');

// calling the function with the 'id' and the 'min' (the 'max' is set to default):
populateSelect('moreSelects', 50);

JS Fiddle demo.

And, finally (after quite a delay…), an approach extending the prototype of the HTMLSelectElement in order to chain the populate() function, as a method, to the DOM node:

HTMLSelectElement.prototype.populate = function (opts) {
    var settings = {};

    settings.min = 0;
    settings.max = settings.min + 100;

    for (var userOpt in opts) {
        if (opts.hasOwnProperty(userOpt)) {
            settings[userOpt] = opts[userOpt];
        }
    }

    for (var i = settings.min; i <= settings.max; i++) {
        this.appendChild(new Option(i, i));
    }
};

document.getElementById('selectElementId').populate({
    'min': 12,
    'max': 40
});

JS Fiddle demo.

References:

• node.appendChild().
• document.getElementById().
• element.innerHTML.