Question

If I need to preselect a dropdown option with a certain value, I can use this:

$('select option[value="123"]').attr('selected', 'selected');

but if I need to preselect an option based on the text it contains I need to do all this:

        $('select option').each(function() {
            var $this = $(this);
            if($this.text() == 'My Text') {
                $this.attr('selected', 'selected');
            }
        });

Is there a way to do it without looping through all the option tags like the first way but based on text instead of value?

Answer 1

Check out the :contains() selector.

http://api.jquery.com/contains-selector/

$('select option:contains("My Text")').prop('selected', true);