How To Set Default Value For HTML Select?

I have a HTML select like this: a b c and I hav

Solution 1:

You first need to add values to your select options and for easy targetting give the select itself an id.

Let's make option b the default:

<select id="mySelect">
    <option>a</option>
    <option selected="selected">b</option>
    <option>c</option>
</select>

Now you can change the default selected value with JavaScript like this:

<script>
var temp = "a";
var mySelect = document.getElementById('mySelect');

for(var i, j = 0; i = mySelect.options[j]; j++) {
    if(i.value == temp) {
        mySelect.selectedIndex = j;
        break;
    }
}
</script>

Also we can use "text" property of i to validate:

if(i.text == temp)

See it in action on codepen.

Solution 2:

Note: this is JQuery. See Sébastien answer for Javascript

$(function() {
    var temp="a"; 
    $("#MySelect").val(temp);
});

<select name="MySelect" id="MySelect">
    <option value="a">a</option>
    <option value="b">b</option>
    <option value="c">c</option>
</select>

Solution 3:

You should define the attributes of option like selected="selected"

<select>
   <option selected="selected">a</option>
   <option>b</option>
   <option>c</option>
</select>

Solution 4:

Simplay you can place HTML select attribute to option a like shown below

Define the attributes like selected="selected"

<select>
   <option selected="selected">a</option>
   <option>b</option>
   <option>c</option>
</select>

Solution 5:

you can define attribute selected="selected" in Ex a