Check if an select option exists based on text in jQuery 1.7

Answer 1

Try the following:

var opt = 'Option1';
if ($('#sel option:contains('+ opt +')').length) {
   alert('This option exists')
}

Demo

edit: The above snippet uses the jQuery contains selector which filters elements that their textContent contains the specified value. For an exact match you can use the code snippet suggested in christian-mann's answer.

How to do this with Javascript (not jquery) – Jerry

var optionExists = [].some.call(document.getElementById('sel').options, function(option) {
   return option.textContent === 'value';
});