Does anyone know of a technique to programmatically create an HTML select list including options using JQuery?
I know this is old, but what the hey:
$selectBox.html($.map(myArray, function(){
    return $('<option/>', {text: this});
}));
var arr = [
  {val : 1, text: 'One'},
  {val : 2, text: 'Two'},
  {val : 3, text: 'Three'}
];
var sel = $('<select>').appendTo('body');
$(arr).each(function() {
 sel.append($("<option>").attr('value',this.val).text(this.text));
});
var s = $('<select/>');
var o = [1, 2, 3];
for (var i in o) {
    s.append($('<option/>').html(o[i]));
}
$('body').append(s);
Here's a variation - based on previous answers in this thread - where all but the select-input options can be specified via an input JSON object:
Would be interesting to see if the options array can somehow be specified in that JSON input?
    var fruitListProfile = {
        id : someKey,
        class : 'fruit_list',
        style : 'margin-right: 20px; '
    };
    var selectInput = $('<select/>', fruitListProfile);
    var fruitOptions = ['apple', 'cherry', 'kiwi'];
    for (var i in fruitOptions) {
        selectInput.append($('<option/>').html(fruitOptions[i]));
    }
This is very straight forward to do:
var selectList = "<select name='numbers'>";
for (var x = 0; x < 10; x++) {
    selectList += "<option>" + x + "</option>";
}
selectList += "</select>";
$('#my-container').html(selectList);
Here is another version of an answer to the question using ajax to fetch a json response used to create the select list with key value pairs
        $.ajax({
        type: 'post',
        url: 'include/parser.php',
        data: {                     
            mode: 'getSubtypes',
            type: type
        },
        success: function (response) {
            var mySubtype = document.getElementById("Component");
            var components = $.parseJSON(response);
            var selectList = document.createElement("select");
            selectList.id = "subtype";
            selectList.name = "subtype";
            mySubtype.appendChild(selectList);
            $('#subtype').append('<option value="">Select ...</option>');
            $.each(components, function(k, v) {
                var option = new Option(v, k); 
                $('#subtype').append($(option));               
            });
        }
    });