Question

I’m using a jquery mobile custom select menu for a selection of countries. I want to set the button icon to the country flag.

I have this:

<div class="ui-select">
   // select button
   <a href="#" role="button" id="brandsByCountry-button" class="ui-btn ui-btn-up-c ui-btn-icon-right ui-btn-corner-all ui-shadow">
      <span class="ui-btn-inner ui-btn-corner-all">
         <span class="ui-btn-text">Germany</span>
         // country flag icon - insert country class here
         <span class="ui-icon ui-icon-lang ui-icon-shadow"></span>
      </span>
   </a>
   // selectmenu
   <select data-iconpos="right" class="ui-fake-icon" data-icon="lang" data-native-menu="false" id="brandsByCountry" name="brandsByCountry">
        <option data-placeholder="true" value="default">Country</option>
        <option value="be">Belgium</option>
        <option value="ch">Switzerland</option>
        <option value="de" selected="selected">Germany</option>
    </select>
 </div>

I can set the flag by adding a country class from val() to the span.ui-icon.

Question:
When the user changes the selection I need to add a new class AND remove the old country class. I’m clueless how to remove the class without removing all the other necessary classes. Also I’m having a hard time to add the respective class using val().

I have this:

    $('#brands').bind( "pagebeforeshow", function( event, data ) {
   var initBrand = $('#brandsByCountry').val(),
       closestBtn = $('#brandsByCountry').prev('.ui-btn');

       closestBtn.addClass( initBrand ); // doesn't work
       closestBtn.addClass( "test" ); // works

       $('#brandsByCountry').live('change', function() {
            var str = $(this).children('option[selected]').val();
            console.log(str);  // ok, gets new class

            closestBtn.addClass( str ).removeClass(':not(".ui-icon, .ui-icon-lang, .ui-icon-shadow")');
            })
        })

Thanks for some input!

SOLUTION
here is my final version based on Skyrim’s answer. I added a check for multiple selects and a default value for the select to display.

$('#brands').one( "pagebeforeshow", function( event, data ) {
     // initial class name
     $('#brandsByCountry').data('oldVal', 'global' );

     // designated element
     var closestBtn = $('#brandsByCountry').prev('a'), 
         orginalClass = $('#brandsByCountry').data('oldVal');

     // add inital class/icon
     closestBtn.addClass( orginalClass+"");

     $('#brandsByCountry').change(function() {

         var $this = $(this),
         // if more than one option is selected go back to global icon
         newClass = $this.val().length >= 2 ? "global" : $this.val(),
         oldClass = $this.data('oldVal');

         $this.data('oldVal', newClass);
         closestBtn.removeClass(oldClass+"").addClass(newClass+""); 
         });

Answer 1

Here is a complete solution at JSFiddle

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EDIT I’m editting this to include all the code here (to reduce depending on JSFiddle being up)

HTML:

<div class="ui-select"> 
   <a href="#" role="button" id="brandsByCountry-button" class="ui-btn ui-btn-up-c ui-btn-icon-right ui-btn-corner-all ui-shadow"> 
      <span class="ui-btn-inner ui-btn-corner-all"> 
         <span class="ui-btn-text">Germany</span> 
         <span class="ui-icon ui-icon-lang ui-icon-shadow de">test</span> 
      </span> 
   </a> 
   <select data-iconpos="right" class="ui-fake-icon" data-icon="lang" data-native-menu="false" id="brandsByCountry" name="brandsByCountry"> 
        <option data-placeholder="true" value="default">Country</option> 
        <option value="be">Belgium</option> 
        <option value="ch">Switzerland</option> 
        <option value="de" selected="selected">Germany</option> 
    </select> 
</div>

CSS:

.ui-icon.be { background-color: Red;}
.ui-icon.ch { background-color: Green;}
.ui-icon.de { background-color: Blue;}

JS:

$('#brandsByCountry').data('oldVal', $('#brandsByCountry').val());
$('#brandsByCountry').change(function() {
    var $this = $(this);
    var newClass = $this.val();
    var oldClass = $this.data('oldVal');
    $this.data('oldVal', newClass);

    $('.ui-icon').removeClass(oldClass).addClass(newClass);
});

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EDIT I update the JSFiddle link (as it was incorrect)

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EDIT I updated the JSFiddle link again to also include changing the country name (just in case you need help with that 🙂 )