Alex Rivera | Logout

Getting the text from a drop-down box

Asked 2008-08-08T13:36:16.877
89

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>
javascript dom browser client-side
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2 Answers

162

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;
answered 2008-08-08T13:54:55.983
1

Does this get the correct answer? 

document.getElementById("newSkill").innerHTML
answered 2008-08-08T13:40:04.780

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