How to select a value in dropdown javascript?

Answer 1

I realize that this is an old question, but I'll post the solution for my use case, in case others run into the same situation I did when implementing James Hill's answer (above).

I found this question while trying to solve the same issue. James' answer got me 90% there. However, for my use case, selecting the item from the dropdown also triggered an action on the page from dropdown's onchange event. James' code as written did not trigger this event (at least in Firefox, which I was testing in). As a result, I made the following minor change:

function setSelectedValue(object, value) {
    for (var i = 0; i < object.options.length; i++) {
        if (object.options[i].text === value) {
            object.options[i].selected = true;
            object.onchange();
            return;
        }
    }

    // Throw exception if option `value` not found.
    var tag = object.nodeName;
    var str = "Option '" + value + "' not found";

    if (object.id != '') {
        str = str + " in //" + object.nodeName.toLowerCase()
              + "[@id='" + object.id + "']."
    }

    else if (object.name != '') {
        str = str + " in //" + object.nodeName.toLowerCase()
              + "[@name='" + object.name + "']."
    }

    else {
        str += "."
    }

    throw str;
}

Note the object.onchange() call, which I added to the original solution. This calls the handler to make certain that the action on the page occurs.

Edit

Added code to throw an exception if option value is not found; this is needed for my use case.