How can we access the value of a radio button using the DOM?

Question

How can we access the value of a radio button using the DOM?

For eg. we have the radio button as :

<input name="sex" type="radio" value="male">

<input name="sex" type="radio" value="female">

They are inside a form with name form1. When I try

document.getElementByName("sex").value

it returns 'male' always irrespective of the checked value.

Answer 1

function getEleByName(){
    if(true==document.getElementsByName('gender')[0].checked){
        alert('selected gender is: male');
    }
    else{
        alert('selected gender is: female');
    }
}

Answer 2

Surprised no-one has suggested actually using the Selector API:

document.querySelector('input[name=sex]:checked').value

Browser support is good

Answer 3

• document.all.sex[0].checked
• document.all.set[1].checked

Answer 4

Loops can achieve the task, as others have shown but it could be simpler than using a loop, which will help performance if desired. Also, it can be portable/modular so it can be used for different radio groups.

Simple Example

function getValue(x) {
  alert(x.value);
}

<input name="sex" type="radio" value="male" onChange="getValue(this)" />
<input name="sex" type="radio" value="female" onChange="getValue(this)" />

A more complex example:

function getValue(x){
  alert(x.value);
}

<fieldset>
  <legend>Sex</legend>
  <label>Male:
    <input name="sex" type="radio" value="male" onChange="getValue(this)"/>
  </label>
  <label>Female:
    <input name="sex" type="radio" value="female" onChange="getValue(this)" />
  </label>
</fieldset>
<fieldset>
  <legend>Age Group</legend>
  <label>0-13:
    <input name="ageGroup" type="radio" value="0-13" onChange="getValue(this)" />
  </label>
  <label>13-18:
    <input name="ageGroup" type="radio" value="13-18" onChange="getValue(this)" />
  </label>
  <label>18-30:
    <input name="ageGroup" type="radio" value="13-18" onChange="getValue(this)" />
  </label>
  <label>30+:
    <input name="ageGroup" type="radio" value="13-18" onChange="getValue(this)" />
  </label>
</fieldset>

Answer 5

document.getElementByName("sex").value

You mean getElementsByName('sex')[0].value? (There's no getElementByName.)

That will of course always pick the first input element with that name — the one whose value is indeed male. You then check to see if it's selected by using the ‘.checked’ property.

For this simple case you can get away with:

var sex= document.getElementsByName("sex")[0].checked? 'male' : 'female';

For the general case you have to loop over each radio input to see which is checked. It would probably be better to get the form object first (putting an id on the form and using document.getElementById is generally better than using the ‘name’-based document.forms collection), and then access form.elements.sex to get the list, in case there are any other elements on the page that have name="sex" attributes (potentially other things than form fields).

Answer 6

Just to "generify" Canavar's very helpful function:

function getRadioValue(theRadioGroup)
{
    var elements = document.getElementsByName(theRadioGroup);
    for (var i = 0, l = elements.length; i < l; i++)
    {
        if (elements[i].checked)
        {
            return elements[i].value;
        }
    }
}

... which would now be referenced thusly:

getRadioValue('sex');

Strange that something like this isn't already a part of prototype.js.

Answer 7

If you use document.form1.sex, you are returned an array.

document.form1.sex[0] = first radio button

document.form1.sex[1] = second radio button

To check which is checked you need to loop:

whoChecked(document.form1.sex)

function whoChecked(fieldName) {
   for(var x=0;x<fieldName.length;x++) {
     if(fieldName[x].checked) {
        return fieldname[x].value
     }
}

Answer 8

If you need the selected one, most frameworks support functionality like this:

//jQuery
$("input[name='sex']:checked").val()

Answer 9

There are a couple of ways.

1. Put an id on each input

<input name="sex" id="sex_male" type="radio" value="male">
<input name="sex" id="sex_female" type="radio" value="female">

Then you can use document.getElementById("sex_male")

2. Use something like PrototypeJS (jQuery works too)

Then you can do something like this:

//This loops over all input elements that have a name of "sex"
$$('input[name="sex"]').each( function(elem) {
  //Do something
});

Or even this to get at just the "male" radio button:

$$('input[name="sex"][value="male"]').each(function(elem) {
  //Do something
});

An easy way to get started with Prototype is include it from Google by adding this between the <head></head> tags of your page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.0.3/prototype.js"></script>

Answer 10

If you want the selected one, but don't have a framework handy, you can iterate over the element array looking for whichever one is checked:

for (var i = 0; i < document.form1.sex.length; i++) {
    if (document.form1.sex[i].checked) alert(document.form1.sex[i].value);
}

Answer 11

You can get your selected radio's value by this method :

<script>
function getRadioValue()
{
    for (var i = 0; i < document.getElementsByName('sex').length; i++)
    {
        if (document.getElementsByName('sex')[i].checked)
        {
            return document.getElementsByName('sex')[i].value;
        }
    }
}
</script>

Answer 12

var list = document.getElementsByName('sex');
for(var i=0;i<list.length;i++){
   if(list[i].type=='radio' && list[i].checked){
      alert(list[i].value);
      break;
   }
}