Which selector do I need to select an option by its text?

Question

I need to check if a <select> has an option whose text is equal to a specific value.

For example, if there's an <option value="123">abc</option>, I would be looking for "abc".

Is there a selector to do this?

Im looking for something similar to $('#select option[value="123"]'); but for the text.

Answer 1

This could help:

$('#test').find('option[text="B"]').val();

Demo fiddle

This would give you the option with text B and not the ones which has text that contains B.

For recent versions of jQuery the above does not work. As commented by Quandary below, this is what works for jQuery 1.9.1:

$('#test option').filter(function () { return $(this).html() == "B"; }).val();

Updated fiddle

Answer 2

You can use the :contains() selector to select elements that contain specific text.
For example:

$('#mySelect option:contains(abc)')

To check whether a given <select> element has such an option, use the .has() method:

if (mySelect.has('option:contains(abc)').length)

To find all <select>s that contain such an option, use the :has() selector:

$('select:has(option:contains(abc))')

Answer 3

None of the previous suggestions worked for me in jQuery 1.7.2 because I'm trying to set the selected index of the list based on the value from a textbox, and some text values are contained in multiple options. I ended up using the following:

$('#mySelect option:contains(' + value + ')').each(function(){
    if ($(this).text() == value) {
        $(this).attr('selected', 'selected');
        return false;
    }
    return true;
});

Answer 4

I faced the same issue below is the working code :

$("#test option").filter(function() {
    return $(this).text() =='Ford';
}).prop("selected", true);

Demo : http://jsfiddle.net/YRBrp/83/

Answer 5

This worked for me: $("#test").find("option:contains('abc')");

Answer 6

This is the best method for select text in dropdownlist.

$("#dropdownid option:contains(your selected text)").attr('selected', true);

Answer 7

I tried a few of these things until I got one to work in both Firefox and IE. This is what I came up with.

$("#my-Select").val($("#my-Select" + " option").filter(function() { return this.text == myText }).val());

another way of writing it in a more readable fasion:

var valofText = $("#my-Select" + " option").filter(function() {
    return this.text == myText
}).val();
$(ElementID).val(valofText);

Pseudocode:

$("#my-Select").val( getValOfText( myText ) );

Answer 8

This work for me

$('#mySelect option:contains(' + value + ')').attr('selected', 'selected');

Answer 9

Use following

$('#select option:contains(ABC)').val();

Answer 10

For jquery version 1.10.2 below worked for me

  var selectedText="YourMatchText";
    $('#YourDropdownId option').map(function () {
       if ($(this).text() == selectedText) return this;
      }).attr('selected', 'selected');
    });

Answer 11

This works for me:

var result = $('#SubjectID option')
            .filter(function () 
             { return $(this).html() == "English"; }).val();

The result variable will return the index of the matched text value. Now I will just set it using it's index:

$('#SubjectID').val(result);

Answer 12

That was 10 years ago. Now jquery is EOL, we can use ordinary DOM for this simple job

document.getElementById("SomeSelectId").querySelectorAll("option").forEach(o => o.selected = o.innerText == text);

Answer 13

August 25, 2022.

For jQuery v3.5.1 what really worked for me is this:

$('#selectID option:contains("label")').prop('selected', true);

If you have the text in a variable, do this:

  ddText = 'Text to find';
  $('#selectID option:contains("' + ddText + '")').prop('selected', true);

Answer 14

This will work in jQuery 1.6 (note colon before the opening bracket), but fails on the newer releases (1.10 at the time).

$('#mySelect option:[text=abc]")

Answer 15

This what worked for me on jquery V3.6.0 in 2022

$("#select >option").filter( function()
{
    if ($(this).text() === "123")
    {
        $(this).prop("selected", true);
    }
});

Answer 16

use prop instead of attr

$('#mySelect option:contains(' + value + ')').each(function(){
    if ($(this).text() == value) {
        $(this).prop('selected', 'selected');
        return false;
    }
    return true;
});

Answer 17

This will also work.

$('#test').find("select option:contains('B')").filter(":selected");

Answer 18

As described in this answer, you can easily create your own selector for hasText. This allows you to find the option with $('#test').find('option:hastText("B")').val();

Here's the hasText method I added:

 if( ! $.expr[':']['hasText'] ) {
     $.expr[':']['hasText'] = function( node, index, props ) {
       var retVal = false;
       // Verify single text child node with matching text
       if( node.nodeType == 1 && node.childNodes.length == 1 ) {
         var childNode = node.childNodes[0];
         retVal = childNode.nodeType == 3 && childNode.nodeValue === props[3];
       }
       return retVal;
     };
  }

Answer 19

This works for me

var options = $(dropdown).find('option');
var targetOption = $(options).filter(
function () { return $(this).html() == value; });

console.log($(targetOption).val());

Thanks for all the posts.

Answer 20

Either you iterate through the options, or put the same text inside another attribute of the option and select with that.