Getting the text from a drop-down box

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5913

Question

This gets the value of whatever is selected in my dropdown menu.

document.getElementById('newSkill').value

I cannot however find out what property to go after for the text that's currently displayed by the drop down menu. I tried "text" then looked at W3Schools but that didn't have the answer, does anybody here know?

For those not sure, here's the HTML for a drop down box.

<select name="newSkill" id="newSkill">
    <option value="1">A skill</option>
    <option value="2">Another skill</option>
    <option value="3">Yet another skill</option>
</select>
Was it helpful?

Solution

Based on your example HTML code, here's one way to get the displayed text of the currently selected option:

var skillsSelect = document.getElementById("newSkill");
var selectedText = skillsSelect.options[skillsSelect.selectedIndex].text;

OTHER TIPS

This should return the text value of the selected value

var vSkill = document.getElementById('newSkill');

var vSkillText = vSkill.options[vSkill.selectedIndex].innerHTML;

alert(vSkillText);

Props: @Tanerax for reading the question, knowing what was asked and answering it before others figured it out.

Edit: DownModed, cause I actually read a question fully, and answered it, sad world it is.

Simply You can use Jquery instead of Javascript

$("#yourdropdownid option:selected").text();

Try This.

document.getElementById('newSkill').options[document.getElementById('newSkill').selectedIndex].value

Should work

This works i tried it my self i thought i post it here in case someone need it...

document.getElementById("newSkill").options[document.getElementById('newSkill').selectedIndex].text;

Attaches a change event to the select that gets the text for each selected option and writes them in the div.

You can use jQuery it very face and successful and easy to use

<select name="sweets" multiple="multiple">
  <option>Chocolate</option>
  <option>Candy</option>
  <option>Taffy</option>
  <option selected="selected">Caramel</option>
  <option>Fudge</option>
  <option>Cookie</option>
</select>
<div></div>


$("select").change(function () {
  var str = "";

  $("select option:selected").each(function() {
    str += $( this ).text() + " ";
  });

  $( "div" ).text( str );
}).change();

Does this get the correct answer? 

document.getElementById("newSkill").innerHTML

function getValue(obj)
{  
   // it will return the selected text
   // obj variable will contain the object of check box
   var text = obj.options[obj.selectedIndex].innerHTML ; 

}

HTML Snippet 

 <asp:DropDownList ID="ddl" runat="server" CssClass="ComboXXX" 
  onchange="getValue(this)">
</asp:DropDownList>

    var ele = document.getElementById('newSkill')
    ele.onchange = function(){
            var length = ele.children.length
            for(var i=0; i<length;i++){
                if(ele.children[i].selected){alert(ele.children[i].text)};              
            }
    }   

var selectoption = document.getElementById("dropdown");
var optionText = selectoption.options[selectoption.selectedIndex].text;

Please try the below this is the easiest way and it works perfectly

var newSkill_Text = document.getElementById("newSkill")[document.getElementById("newSkill").selectedIndex];

Here is an easy and short method

document.getElementById('elementID').selectedOptions[0].innerHTML
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