CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jqueryselect
Ilia Draznin
Ilia Draznin

Reputation: 1046

Behavior of val() for multiple select in jQuery changed?

So everywhere I looked everybody says that to output values of selected options in a multiple select element one should use something like the following $('#selid :selected').val() and that in such case val() will return an array of values. Well, I can't replicate this behaviour. As far as I can tell such code returns just the first selected value. Here's a quick jsfiddle snippet that demonstrates that.

Notice that using each to iterate through $('#selid :selected') does work, but calling val() on that array does not produce an array of values as far as I can tell. In fact, calling $('#selid :selected').val().each(... results in an error message.

So, am I doing something wrong or has this behavior been changed at some point?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 9146

Answers (2)

Matt Ball
Matt Ball

Reputation: 360056

"in such case val() will return an array of values. Well, I can't replicate this behaviour."

You never need to use :selected to get the value of a <select>. This is sufficient:

$('#selid').val()

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/mattball/WZRmD/

Upvotes: 1

James Allardice
James Allardice

Reputation: 166071

The val function gets the value of the first element in the set of matched elements. To get the value of multiple selected items, when using the :selected selector, you need to loop through the set, as you mention in your question.

For more information, read the jQuery API for val().

Upvotes: 1

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