Sending Multiple Dropdown selected values as Hidden Field using JQuery

Question

I want to be able to send all the selected values from a dropdown box (which allows multiple selection) as a hidden field using JQuery. I was able to send/retrieve a single value on form submission.

If anyone can share some code snippet, that would help.

Thanks in Advance!

Answer 1

Well, it's not so clear what you are really asking for. There is no "multiple selection dropdownlist" in HTML. To have a multiselect you need to specify

<select id="foobar" multiple>

that will create a listbox where you may select multiple elements. Calling

var sel = $('#foobar').val();

will return an Array of selected items.

edit

To get the text from each option, use .map() or jQuery.map(). Example:

var sel = $('#foobar').children('option:selected').map(function(i,e){
    return e.innerText;
}).get();

That will create an Array containing the text of all selected entrys.

Answer 2

There's absolutely no need to do like that. You was apparently using request.getParameter() instead of request.getParameterValues() and wondering why it returned only the first value.

Just fix your servlet code accordingly:

String[] selectedItems = request.getParameterValues("dropdownname");

No need for ugly JS/jQuery hacks to send them all as single parameter. In future questions, try to ask how to solve a problem instead of how to achieve a solution which may after all not be the right solution per se.