The React way to set which option is selected for a select box, is to set a special value prop on the itself, corresponding to the <
In case you want to use ref you can get selected values like this:
var select = React.findDOMNode(this.refs.selectRef);
var values = [].filter.call(select.options, function (o) {
return o.selected;
}).map(function (o) {
return o.value;
});
2018 ES6 update
let select = this.refs.selectRef;
let values = [].filter.call(select.options, o => o.selected).map(o => o.value);