Selecting option by text content with jQuery

Question

I want to set a dropdown box to whatever has been passed through a querystring using jquery.

How do I add the selected attribute to an option such that the \"TEXT\"

Answer 1

I know this question is too old, but still, I think this approach would be cleaner:

cat = $.URLDecode(cat);
$('#cbCategory option:contains("' + cat + '")').prop('selected', true);

In this case you wont need to go over the entire options with each(). Although by that time prop() didn't exist so for older versions of jQuery use attr().

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UPDATE

You have to be certain when using contains because you can find multiple options, in case of the string inside cat matches a substring of a different option than the one you intend to match.

Then you should use:

cat = $.URLDecode(cat);
$('#cbCategory option')
    .filter(function(index) { return $(this).text() === cat; })
    .prop('selected', true);