Jquery dynamically update “other” option in select

Question

I\'m working on a project that will be using a lot of select menus to enter various data. I\'d like to include an \'other\' option directly in the select that will trigger a sim

Answer 1

I actually solved a problem very similar to this and ended up writing a jQuery plugin (jQuery.otherDropdown) to collect an 'other' response for a select dropdown. It's on GitHub and npm. I'll break down my approach so you can implement it your own way.

This idea is a perfect use case for jQuery in my opinion.

The basic components

Listen for when your 'other' options is slected

Add a .change() event binding on the select input.

$('select').change( function() {
    if(this.value === 'other') {
        // Your logic here to for when/how to prompt for user input
    }
});

Listen for user input

If you choose an text input instead of a prompt (which may be a better user experience), listen for the blur event

// listen to a text area
$('input').blur( function() {
    if(this.value !== '') {
        // Logic to add the new option to the select
    }
});

// or bring up a prompt dialog
var value=prompt("Please indicate 'other' value:");
if(this.value !== '') {
    // Logic to add the new option to the select
}

Add the new option

No matter how you choose to prompt the user for the value, adding it is as simple as creating the element via jQuery and appending it. Lastly you'll probably want to focus the value, which can be done with .val()

var $option = $('' + value + '');
$('select').append($option);
$('select').val(value);

Example

All of these ideas are wrapped in this plugin and might a good example you can play with and reuse to work how you need. You can see it working here

/**
 * @name jquery.otherdropdown
 * @description A small jQuery plugin to support a text area when selecting an 'Other' option in a dropdown
 * @version 1.0.2
 * @author Jonathan Stassen 
 * @see https://github.com/TheBox193/jquery.otherdropdown
 */
$.fn.otherDropdown = function(options) {
    var $this = this;
    // Allow a different name/value to trigger, default to 'other'
    var opts = $.extend({}, {value: 'other'}, options);
    opts.name_lower = opts.value.toLowerCase();
    opts.name_upper = opts.value.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + opts.value.slice(1);
    opts.placeholder = opts.placeholder || opts.name_upper;

    // Bind to all change events
    $this.change( function(ev){

        // Swap in the text area if our 'other' option was chosen
        if (this.value === opts.name_lower || this.value === opts.name_upper) {
            $this.hide().after( $textInput );
            $textInput.focus();
        }
    });

    // Prepare our text input
    var $textInput = $('');

    // Allow custom classes on the text input
    if (opts.classes) {
        $textInput.addClass(opts.classes);
    }

    // Bind to blur to swap back to select dropdown
    $textInput.blur( function(ev) {
        var value = this.value;
        this.value = '';
        this.remove();
        $this.show();

        if (value === '' || value === opts.name_lower || value === opts.name_upper) {
            return;
        }

        // If something was typed, create a new option with that value
        var $searchedOption = $this.children('[value="' + value + '"]');

        // If value doesn't exist, added it.
        if ( $searchedOption.length < 1 ) {
            var $option = $('' + value + '');
            $this.append($option);
        }

        // Focus the value
        $this.val( value );
    });
};