I have a multiple select dropdown. I am trying to show the selected values in the dropdown.
If I hard code the values, it works -
$("select[name=clause1]").val(["ab","cd"]);
but if I define a variable with the values, it does not -
var temp = "[\"ab\",\"cd\"]";
$("select[name=clause1]").val(temp);
what I am doing wrong?
The first snippet sets the values using an array. Second tries it with just a string. Since there is no matching value of that string, it simply doesn't set the value of the select box.
Change your code to this instead:
var temp = ["ab", "cd"];
$("select[name=clause1]").val(temp);
Additionally, if you've the string (JSON), you can convert it to the array using JSON.parse:
var temp = JSON.parse("[\"ab\",\"cd\"]");
$("select[name=clause1]").val(temp);
You can also use eval function for this purpose.
var values= "[\"ab\",\"cd\"]"
$('select').val(eval(values))<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<select multiple>
<option value="ab">ab</option>
<option value="bc">bc</option>
<option value="cd">cd</option>
</select>However, eval is evil but worth useful in many cases. If you closely look into the link's description it will tell you the usage of JSON.parse using eval but in a safer manner.
