Check if the dropdown menu option is selected using JavaScript

Question

Below are the options that I have in my HTML code:

<label id="subn"> <select name="subs" id="subs"> <option value="nothing">Choose a Subject</option> <option value="General Question">General Question</option> <option value="MemberShip Area">MemberShip Area</option> <option value="Others">Others</option> </select> </label> 

I want to create JavaScript code that will check if a user has selected a different option than the first.

Here is what I tried:

 if (document.getElementsByTagName('option') == "nothing"){ document.getElementById("subn").innerHTML = "Subject is Required!"; document.getElementById("subs").focus(); return false; } 

Answer 1

You can check this if nothing comes first (usually in my case):

 if (document.getElementById('subs').selectedIndex == 0){ 

To still compare based on the value, do the following:

 var sel = document.getElementById('subs'); if (sel.options[sel.selectedIndex].value == 'nothing') { 

You can change your markup so that the label is near, for example:

 <select name="subs" id="subs"></select><label id="subn" for="subs"></label> 

Otherwise, this part: .innerHTML = "Subject is Required!"; erases your <select> :)

Answer 2

This should do it:

 var index = document.your_form_name.subs.selectedIndex; var value = document.your_form_name.subs.options[index].value; if (value === "nothing"){ // your further code here......... } 

Answer 3

document.getElementsByTagName('option') gives a set of all option elements in the document, and "nothing" is a string. Comparing a collection to a string is completely useless.

Also setting document.getElementById("subn").innerHTML = "Subject is Required!"; will remove the select element, so document.getElementById("subs") will not find anything else.

If you just need to know if something will be selected, check the selectedIndex property of the select element:

 if (document.getElementById("subs").selectedIndex <= 0) { // nothing is selected } 

EDIT: changed > 0 to <= 0 . I would suggest that it should be checked if the user has not selected anything.