What is the best way to add options to a select from a JavaScript object with jQuery?

Darryl Hein picture Darryl Hein · Oct 4, 2008 · Viewed 1M times · Source

What is the best method for adding options to a <select> from a JavaScript object using jQuery?

I'm looking for something that I don't need a plugin to do, but I would also be interested in the plugins that are out there.

This is what I did:

selectValues = { "1": "test 1", "2": "test 2" };

for (key in selectValues) {
  if (typeof (selectValues[key] == 'string') {
    $('#mySelect').append('<option value="' + key + '">' + selectValues[key] + '</option>');
  }
}

A clean/simple solution:

This is a cleaned up and simplified version of matdumsa's:

$.each(selectValues, function(key, value) {
     $('#mySelect')
          .append($('<option>', { value : key })
          .text(value));
});

Changes from matdumsa's: (1) removed the close tag for the option inside append() and (2) moved the properties/attributes into an map as the second parameter of append().

Answer

matdumsa picture matdumsa · Oct 4, 2008

The same as other answers, in a jQuery fashion:

$.each(selectValues, function(key, value) {   
     $('#mySelect')
         .append($("<option></option>")
                    .attr("value", key)
                    .text(value)); 
});