Select box - obtaining value of selected option by simple documen.getElementById('id').value

Asked Nov 10 '15 at 10:59

Active Nov 10 '15 at 10:59

Viewed 19 times

In Javascript, I was supposed to retrieve a select box' value by something like this:

var e = document.getElementById("elementId");
var value = e.options[e.selectedIndex].value;

However, it seems that under some circumstances, the simple approach also works:

 var value = document.getElementById("elementId").value;

Unfortunately, in my program this approach does not work always.

What does this working-or-not-working rely on?

asked Nov 10 '15 at 10:59

Lokomotywa

Your jsFiddle works good for me. What browser are you using? – Sergio Nov 10 '15 at 11:02
yes, my question is rather WHY it works because it is supposed to work not. – Lokomotywa Nov 10 '15 at 11:04
Why is it supposed not to work? – Sergio Nov 10 '15 at 11:05
because this is supposed to be used instead: `var e = document.getElementById("elementId"); var value = e.options[e.selectedIndex].value;` – Lokomotywa Nov 10 '15 at 11:06
1

Why "instead"? both works. Modern browsers read the `.value` directly from the select element. – Sergio Nov 10 '15 at 11:09
yes, and that was new to me, because I learnt once to use the selectedIndex option – Lokomotywa Nov 10 '15 at 11:20

0 Answers0