Changing selection in a select with the Chosen plugin

I'm trying to change the currently selected option in a select with the Chosen plugin.

The documentation covers updating the list, and triggering an event when an option is selected, but nothing (that I can see) on externally changing the currently selected value.

I have made a jsFiddle to demonstrate the code and my attempted ways of changing the selection:

$('button').click(function() {
    $('select').val(2);
    $('select').chosen().val(2);
    $('select').chosen().select(2);
});

From the "Updating Chosen Dynamically" section in the docs: You need to trigger the 'chosen:updated' event on the field

$(document).ready(function() {

    $('select').chosen();

    $('button').click(function() {
        $('select').val(2);
        $('select').trigger("chosen:updated");
    });

});

NOTE: versions prior to 1.0 used the following:

$('select').trigger("liszt:updated");

My answer is late, but i want to add some information that is missed in all above answers.

1) If you want to select single value in chosen select.

$('#select-id').val("22").trigger('chosen:updated');

2) If you are using multiple chosen select, then may you need to set multiple values at single time.

$('#documents').val(["22", "25", "27"]).trigger('chosen:updated');

Information gathered from following links:
1) Chosen Docs
2) Chosen Github Discussion


Sometimes you have to remove the current options in order to manipulate the selected options.

Here is an example how to set options:

<select id="mySelectId" class="chosen-select" multiple="multiple">
  <option value=""></option>
  <option value="Argentina">Argentina</option>
  <option value="Germany">Germany</option>
  <option value="Greece">Greece</option>
  <option value="Japan">Japan</option>
  <option value="Thailand">Thailand</option>
</select>

<script>
activateChosen($('body'));
selectChosenOptions($('#mySelectId'), ['Argentina', 'Germany']);

function activateChosen($container, param) {
    param = param || {};
    $container.find('.chosen-select:visible').chosen(param);
    $container.find('.chosen-select').trigger("chosen:updated");
}

function selectChosenOptions($select, values) {
    $select.val(null);                                  //delete current options
    $select.val(values);                                //add new options
    $select.trigger('chosen:updated');
}
</script>

JSFiddle (including howto append options): https://jsfiddle.net/59x3m6op/1/


In case of multiple type of select and/or if you want to remove already selected items one by one, directly within a dropdown list items, you can use something like:

jQuery("body").on("click", ".result-selected", function() {
    var locID = jQuery(this).attr('class').split('__').pop();
    // I have a class name: class="result-selected locvalue__209"
    var arrayCurrent = jQuery('#searchlocation').val();
    var index = arrayCurrent.indexOf(locID);
    if (index > -1) {
        arrayCurrent.splice(index, 1);
    }
    jQuery('#searchlocation').val(arrayCurrent).trigger('chosen:updated');
});