How to hide a in a <select> menu wi

Question

I've realized that Chrome, it seems, will not allow me to hide <option> in a <select>. Firefox will.

I need to hide the <option>s that match a search criteria. In the Chrome web tools I can see that they are correctly being set to display: none; by my JavaScript, but once then <select> menu is clicked they are shown.

How can I make these <option>s that match my search criteria NOT show when the menu is clicked? Thanks!

Answer 1

this one seems to work for me in chrome

$("#selectid span option").unwrap();
$("#selectid option:not([filterattr=filtervalue])").wrap('<span/>');

Answer 2

For HTML5, you can use the 'hidden' attribute.

<option hidden>Hidden option</option>

It is not supported by IE < 11. But if you need only to hide a few elements, maybe it would be better to just set the hidden attribute in combination with disabled in comparison to adding/removing elements or doing not semantically correct constructions.

<select>  
  <option>Option1</option>
  <option>Option2</option>
  <option hidden>Hidden Option</option>
</select>

Reference.

Answer 3

Simple answer: You can't. Form elements have very limited styling capabilities.

The best alternative would be to set disabled=true on the option (and maybe a gray colour, since only IE does that automatically), and this will make the option unclickable.

Alternatively, if you can, completely remove the option element.

Answer 4

I would suggest that you do not use the solutions that use a <span> wrapper because it isn't valid HTML, which could cause problems down the road. I think the preferred solution is to actually remove any options that you wish to hide, and restore them as needed. Using jQuery, you'll only need these 3 functions:

The first function will save the original contents of the select. Just to be safe, you may want to call this function when you load the page.

function setOriginalSelect ($select) {
    if ($select.data("originalHTML") == undefined) {
        $select.data("originalHTML", $select.html());
    } // If it's already there, don't re-set it
}

This next function calls the above function to ensure that the original contents have been saved, and then simply removes the options from the DOM.

function removeOptions ($select, $options) {
    setOriginalSelect($select);
    $options.remove();
 }

The last function can be used whenever you want to "reset" back to all the original options.

function restoreOptions ($select) {
    var ogHTML = $select.data("originalHTML");
    if (ogHTML != undefined) {
        $select.html(ogHTML);
    }
}

Note that all these functions expect that you're passing in jQuery elements. For example:

// in your search function...
var $s = $('select.someClass');
var $optionsThatDontMatchYourSearch= $s.find('options.someOtherClass');
restoreOptions($s); // Make sure you're working with a full deck
removeOptions($s, $optionsThatDontMatchYourSearch); // remove options not needed

Here is a working example: http://jsfiddle.net/9CYjy/23/

Answer 5

!!! WARNING !!!

Replace the second "IF" by "WHILE" or doesn't work !

jQuery.fn.toggleOption = function( show ) {
    jQuery( this ).toggle( show );
    if( show ) {
        while( jQuery( this ).parent( 'span.toggleOption' ).length )
            jQuery( this ).unwrap( );
    } else {
        jQuery( this ).wrap( '<span class="toggleOption" style="display: none;" />' );
    }
};

Answer 6

Select inputs are tricky in this way. What about disabling it instead, this will work cross-browser:

$('select').children(':nth-child(even)').prop('disabled', true);

This will disable every-other <option> element, but you can select which ever one you want.

Here is a demo: http://jsfiddle.net/jYWrH/

Note: If you want to remove the disabled property of an element you can use .removeProp('disabled').

Update

You could save the <option> elements you want to hide in hidden select element:

$('#visible').on('change', function () {
    $(this).children().eq(this.selectedIndex).appendTo('#hidden');
});

You can then add the <option> elements back to the original select element:

$('#hidden').children().appendTo('#visible');

In these two examples it's expected that the visible select element has the id of visible and the hidden select element has the id of hidden.

Here is a demo: http://jsfiddle.net/jYWrH/1/

Note that .on() is new in jQuery 1.7 and in the usage for this answer is the same as .bind(): http://api.jquery.com/on