How to set selected select option in Handlebars template

With a Handlebars.js template like this...

<select>
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
</select>

... and data like this...

{
    "id"     : 1,
    "name"   : "World"
    "status" : "OverDue",
    "date"   : "2012-12-21"
}

I want to render HTML like this.

<select>
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue" selected="selected">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
</select>

Which way is the easiest?

I found a lot of over complicated solutions and decided to write my own using a Handlebars helper.

With this partial (using Jquery) ...

    window.Handlebars.registerHelper('select', function( value, options ){
        var $el = $('<select />').html( options.fn(this) );
        $el.find('[value="' + value + '"]').attr({'selected':'selected'});
        return $el.html();
    });

You can wrap selects in your Handlebars template with {{#select status}}...

<select>
    {{#select status}}
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
    {{/select}}
</select>

and end up with this...

<select>
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue" selected="selected">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
</select>

Presto!

I just had a similar need as the OP--with a static set of select options, but a dynamic selected value. I really like @janjarfalk's solution, but I'm using node.js and don't have jQuery pulled in. So, I put together my own variation based on RegExp's. Hope this is helpful to others.

Handlebars helper:

hbs.registerHelper('select', function(selected, options) {
    return options.fn(this).replace(
        new RegExp(' value=\"' + selected + '\"'),
        '$& selected="selected"');
});

Handlebars template:

<select>
    {{#select CurrentSort}}
    <option value="1">Most Recent First</option>
    <option value="2">Most Recent Last</option>
    <option value="3">Highest Score First</option>
    <option value="4">Highest Score Last</option>
    <option value="5">Most Comments</option>
    <option value="6">Fewest Comments</option>
    <option value="7">Most Helpful Votes</option>
    <option value="8">Fewest Helpful Votes</option>
    {{/select}}
</select>

You can tweak the helper to work even if you don't use the value attribute--just adjust the regexp to search the element text, and do the string replacement before the matched text.

I saw the extremely clever solution posted by @janjarfalk and realized it didn't work for options defined without a value attribute (such as <option>Value</option>). My application needed that, and I wanted a helper done in vanilla JavaScript for performance, so I came up with the following.

This solution will support <option>Both a label and a value</option> in addition to <option value="aValue">A label</option> and will be much faster as it doesn't use jQuery.

Handlebars.registerHelper('select', function(value, options) {
    // Create a select element 
    var select = document.createElement('select');

    // Populate it with the option HTML
    select.innerHTML = options.fn(this);

    // Set the value
    select.value = value;

    // Find the selected node, if it exists, add the selected attribute to it
    if (select.children[select.selectedIndex])
        select.children[select.selectedIndex].setAttribute('selected', 'selected');

    return select.innerHTML;
});

Usage:

<select>
    {{#select status}}
    <option>Option 1</option>
    <option>Option 2</option>
    <option value="Option 3">Option 3 (extra info)</option>
    <option value="Option 4">Option 4 (more extra)</option>
    {{/select}}
</select>

Works for me

<select>
    <option value="{{status}}" hidden="hidden" selected="selected">{{status}}</option>
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
</select>