Javascript to sort contents of select element

This will do the trick. Just pass it your select element a la: document.getElementById('lstALL') when you need your list sorted.

function sortSelect(selElem) {
    var tmpAry = new Array();
    for (var i=0;i<selElem.options.length;i++) {
        tmpAry[i] = new Array();
        tmpAry[i][0] = selElem.options[i].text;
        tmpAry[i][1] = selElem.options[i].value;
    }
    tmpAry.sort();
    while (selElem.options.length > 0) {
        selElem.options[0] = null;
    }
    for (var i=0;i<tmpAry.length;i++) {
        var op = new Option(tmpAry[i][0], tmpAry[i][1]);
        selElem.options[i] = op;
    }
    return;
}

This solution worked very nicely for me using jquery, thought I'd cross reference it here as I found this page before the other one. Someone else might do the same.

$("#id").html($("#id option").sort(function (a, b) {
    return a.text == b.text ? 0 : a.text < b.text ? -1 : 1
}))

from Sorting dropdown list using Javascript

Vanilla JS es6 Localization Options Sorting Example

const optionNodes = Array.from(selectNode.children);
const comparator = new Intl.Collator(lang.slice(0, 2)).compare;

optionNodes.sort((a, b) => comparator(a.textContent, b.textContent));
optionNodes.forEach((option) => selectNode.appendChild(option));

My use case was to localize a country select dropdown with locale aware sorting. This was used on 250 + options and was very performant ~10ms on my machine.

Working with the answers provided by Marco Lazzeri and Terre Porter (vote them up if this answer is useful), I came up with a slightly different solution that preserves the selected value (probably doesn't preserve event handlers or attached data, though) using jQuery.

// save the selected value for sorting
var v = jQuery("#id").val();

// sort the options and select the value that was saved
j$("#id")
    .html(j$("#id option").sort(function(a,b){
        return a.text == b.text ? 0 : a.text < b.text ? -1 : 1;}))
    .val(v);

From the W3C FAQ:

Although many programming languages have devices like drop-down boxes that have the capability of sorting a list of items before displaying them as part of their functionality, the HTML <select> function has no such capabilities. It lists the <options> in the order received.

You'd have to sort them by hand for a static HTML document, or resort to Javascript or some other programmatic sort for a dynamic document.