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I wonder if it's possible in Javascript to get the currently selected options in a <select multiple> field using the Selctors API rather than a "stupid" iteration over all options.

select.querySelectorAll('option[selected="selected"]') only returns the options that were marked as preselected in the original HTML, which is not what I'm looking for. Any ideas?

GOTO 0
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  • I think your only option is to iterate over all `option` elements and filter out the ones that are not selected. – Felix Kling Mar 23 '13 at 12:16

3 Answers3

69

document.querySelectorAll('option:checked')

Works even on IE9 ;)

a better oliver
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-1

I was also experienced your issue, I have a feeling it's to do with JavaScript not recognising changes in the DOM.

Here is a solution:

jsFiddle

document.getElementById('test').onclick = function () {
    var select = document.getElementById('select');
    var options = getSelectedOptions(select);
    console.log(options);
};

function getSelectedOptions(select) {
    var result = [];
    var options = select.getElementsByTagName('option');
    for (var i = 0; i < options.length; i++) {
        if (options[i].selected)
            result.push(options[i]);
    };
    return result;
}
Daniel Imms
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    JS recognizes these changes to the DOM. The problem is that the `selected` DOM property is non-serializable. The `selected` attribute corresponds to the `defaultSelected` DOM property, so querying for the attribute as in `[selected]` will return elements that have `defaultSelected` DOM property set to `true`. – Fabrício Matté Jul 14 '13 at 06:38
-1

As described in

https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/prop_select_selectedindex.asp

you can get the currently selected index with selectObject.selectedIndex

It also changes in a change eventListener.

For example:

id_selected = document.querySelector('#sel').selectedIndex;
console.log(document.querySelector('#sel')[id_selected]);
Donapieppo
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  • I think that last line may need to be `console.log(document.querySelector('#sel').options[id_selected]);` – Kirkman14 Feb 28 '22 at 21:40