How To Get Dropdown Selected Value In Jquery

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In this blog post, we will demonstrate how to easily get the selected value of a dropdown (also known as a select box or combobox) using jQuery. This can be a useful tool when creating dynamic web applications that require user input.

What is jQuery?

jQuery is a fast and lightweight cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It provides many useful features and functions to make it easier for developers to build web applications.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, make sure you have included the jQuery library in your HTML file. You can either download it from the official jQuery website or include it directly from a CDN (Content Delivery Network) like Google or Microsoft.

Here’s an example of how to include jQuery from Google’s CDN:

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Getting Started

First, let’s create a simple HTML dropdown:

<select id="myDropdown">
  <option value="option1">Option 1</option>
  <option value="option2">Option 2</option>
  <option value="option3">Option 3</option>
</select>

Now let’s discuss how to get the selected value of this dropdown using jQuery.

Method 1: Using the val() function

jQuery provides a built-in val() function that is used to get or set the value of form elements. To get the selected value of our dropdown, we can use the following code:

<script>
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $('#myDropdown').change(function() {
      var selectedValue = $(this).val();
      alert('Selected Value: ' + selectedValue);
    });
  });
</script>

In this example, we first wait for the document to be ready using $(document).ready(). Then, we attach a change event listener to our dropdown with the ID myDropdown. When the user selects a different option in the dropdown, the change event is triggered, and the selected value is retrieved using $(this).val().

Method 2: Using the :selected pseudo-class selector

Another way to get the selected value of a dropdown is by using the :selected pseudo-class selector. Here’s the code:

<script>
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $('#myDropdown').change(function() {
      var selectedValue = $(this).find('option:selected').val();
      alert('Selected Value: ' + selectedValue);
    });
  });
</script>

This time, instead of using the val() function directly, we use the find() function to search for the selected option within the dropdown. Then, we retrieve the value of the selected option using the val() function.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we demonstrated two different methods to get the selected value of a dropdown using jQuery. Both methods are easy to implement and can be helpful when working with user input in your web applications. No matter which method you choose, jQuery makes it simple to get the job done.