How to change a <select> value from JavaScript

Setting .value to the value of one of the options works on all vaguely-current browsers. On very old browsers, you used to have to set the selectedIndex:

document.getElementById("select").selectedIndex = 0;

If neither that nor your original code is working, I wonder if you might be using IE and have something else on the page creating something called "select"? (Either as a name or as a global variable?) Because some versions of IE have a problem where they conflate namespaces. Try changing the select's id to "fluglehorn" and if that works, you know that's the problem.


$('#select').val('defaultValue'); 
$('#select').change();

This will also trigger events hooked to this select


I found that doing document.getElementById("select").value = "defaultValue" wont work.

You must be experiencing a separate bug, as this works fine in this live demo.

And here's the full working code in case you are interested:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
    <title>Demo</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        var selectFunction = function() {
            document.getElementById("select").value = "defaultValue";
        };
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <select id="select">
        <option value="defaultValue">Default</option>
        <option value="Option1">Option1</option>
        <option value="Option2">Option2</option>    
    </select>
    <input type="button" value="CHANGE" onclick="selectFunction()" />
</body>
</html>

Tags:

Javascript

Html

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