Selecting option in p:selectOneMenu using JS

Question

I'm trying to pre-select the country of user in a selectOneMenu using javascript. The problem is that when the page initially loads the list is still on the first element. However if I click on the arrow to expand the list, and then click somewhere else on the page to make the list disappear, then the value is the one set by javascript.

<p:selectOneMenu styleClass="inputField selectOneMenuColored" required="true" editable="false" id="country" value="#{subscribeUser.user.countryBean}" converter="#{countriesConverter}" effect="fold">
   <f:selectItems value="#{countriesConverter.countries}" var="country" itemLabel="#{country.shortName}" itemValue="#{country}" />
</p:selectOneMenu>

and the javascript:

<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.geoplugin.net/javascript.gp" type="text/javascript"></script>
<h:body id="whole" onload="setSelectedIndex('form:country_input',geoplugin_countryName());">
...
function setSelectedIndex(menuId, val){
    var menu = document.getElementById(menuId);
    var opts = menu.options;
    for( j = 0; j < opts.length; j++) {
        if(opts[j].value == val) {
            opts[j].selected= "true";
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

I'm not sure what's the goal but the answer is this:

Select by value:

PF('selectOneMenuWV').selectValue('3')

Select by label:

PF('selectOneMenuWV').selectItem(PF('selectOneMenuWV').jq.find('.ui-selectonemenu-item[data-label*="Option Label"]'))

Note that you should define a widgetVar, which is selectOneMenuWV in this example.

<p:selectOneMenu ... widgetVar="selectOneMenuWV">