How do I add options to a DropDownList using jQuery?

As the question says, how do I add a new option to a DropDownList using jQuery?

Thanks

Solution 1:

Without using any extra plugins,

var myOptions = {
    val1 : 'text1',
    val2 : 'text2'
};
var mySelect = $('#mySelect');
$.each(myOptions, function(val, text) {
    mySelect.append(
        $('<option></option>').val(val).html(text)
    );
});

If you had lots of options, or this code needed to be run very frequently, then you should look into using a DocumentFragment instead of modifying the DOM many times unnecessarily. For only a handful of options, I'd say it's not worth it though.

------------------------------- Added --------------------------------

DocumentFragment is good option for speed enhancement, but we cannot create option element using document.createElement('option') since IE6 and IE7 are not supporting it.

What we can do is, create a new select element and then append all options. Once loop is finished, append it to actual DOM object.

var myOptions = {
    val1 : 'text1',
    val2 : 'text2'
};
var _select = $('<select>');
$.each(myOptions, function(val, text) {
    _select.append(
            $('<option></option>').val(val).html(text)
        );
});
$('#mySelect').append(_select.html());

This way we'll modify DOM for only one time!

Solution 2:

With no plug-ins, this can be easier without using as much jQuery, instead going slightly more old-school:

var myOptions = {
    val1 : 'text1',
    val2 : 'text2'
};
$.each(myOptions, function(val, text) {
    $('#mySelect').append( new Option(text,val) );
});

If you want to specify whether or not the option a) is the default selected value, and b) should be selected now, you can pass in two more parameters:

    var defaultSelected = false;
    var nowSelected     = true;
    $('#mySelect').append( new Option(text,val,defaultSelected,nowSelected) );