Can an Option in a Select tag carry multiple values?

Question

I got a select tag with some options in a HTML form:
(the data will be collected and processed using PHP)

Testing:

<select name="Testing">  
  <option value="1"> One  
  <option value="2"> Two  
  <option value="3"> Three
</select>

Is it possible for an option to carry multiple values like when a user selects "One", then a few other values related to this option will be written to the Database.

How should I design the select Tag so that each of the options can carry one than one value like this:

<select name="Testing">  
  <option value="1" value="2010"> One  
  <option value="2" value="2122"> Two  
  <option value="3" value="0"> Three
</select>

Answer 1

One way to do this, first one an array, 2nd an object:

    <select name="">
        <option value='{"num_sequence":[0,1,2,3]}'>Option one</option>
        <option value='{"foo":"bar","one":"two"}'>Option two</option>
    </select>

Edited (3 years after answering) to put both values into JSON format (using JSON.stringify()) because of a complaint that my proof-of-concept answer "could confuse a newbie developer."

Answer 2

I was actually wondering this today, and I achieved it by using the php explode function, like this:

HTML Form (in a file I named 'doublevalue.php':

    <form name="car_form" method="post" action="doublevalue_action.php">
            <select name="car" id="car">
                    <option value="">Select Car</option>
                    <option value="BMW|Red">Red BMW</option>
                    <option value="Mercedes|Black">Black Mercedes</option>
            </select>
            <input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="submit">
    </form>

PHP action (in a file I named doublevalue_action.php)

    <?php
            $result = $_POST['car'];
            $result_explode = explode('|', $result);
            echo "Model: ". $result_explode[0]."<br />";
            echo "Colour: ". $result_explode[1]."<br />";
    ?>

As you can see in the first piece of code, we're creating a standard HTML select box, with 2 options. Each option has 1 value, which has a separator (in this instance, '|') to split the values (in this case, model and colour).

On the action page, I'm exploding the results into an array, then calling each one. As you can see, I've separated and labelled them so you can see the effect this is causing.

I hope this helps someone :)

Answer 3

its possible to have multiple values in a select option as shown below.

<select id="ddlEmployee" class="form-control">
    <option value="">-- Select --</option>
    <option value="1" data-city="Washington" data-doj="20-06-2011">John</option>
    <option value="2" data-city="California" data-doj="10-05-2015">Clif</option>
    <option value="3" data-city="Delhi" data-doj="01-01-2008">Alexander</option>
</select>

you can get selected value on change event using jquery as shown below.

$("#ddlEmployee").change(function () {
     alert($(this).find(':selected').data('city'));
});

You can find more details in this LINK

Answer 4

one option is to put multi value with comma seperated

like

value ="123,1234"

and in the server side separate them

Answer 5

When I need to do this, I make the other values data-values and then use js to assign them to a hidden input

<select id=select>
<option value=1 data-othervalue=2 data-someothervalue=3>
//...
</select>

<input type=hidden name=otherValue id=otherValue />
<input type=hidden name=someOtherValue id=someOtherValue />

<script>
$('#select').change(function () {
var otherValue=$(this).find('option:selected').attr('data-othervalue');
var someOtherValue=$(this).find('option:selected').attr('data-someothervalue');
$('#otherValue').val(otherValue);
$('#someOtherValue').val(someOtherValue);
});
</script>

Answer 6

What about html data attributes? That's the easiest way. Reference from w3school

In your case

$('select').on('change', function() {
  alert('value a is:' + $("select option:selected").data('valuea') +
    '\nvalue b is:' + $("select option:selected").data('valueb')
  )
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.2.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<select name="Testing">
  <option value="1" data-valuea="2010" data-valueb="2011"> One
    <option value="2" data-valuea="2122" data-valueb="2123"> Two
      <option value="3" data-valuea="0" data-valueb="1"> Three
</select>

Answer 7

If you're goal is to write this information to the database, then why do you need to have a primary value and 'related' values in the value attribute? Why not just send the primary value to the database and let the relational nature of the database take care of the rest.

If you need to have multiple values in your OPTIONs, try a delimiter that isn't very common:

<OPTION VALUE="1|2010">One</OPTION>

...

or add an object literal (JSON format):

<OPTION VALUE="{'primary':'1','secondary':'2010'}">One</OPTION>

...

It really depends on what you're trying to do.

Answer 8

put values for each options like

<SELECT NAME="val">
   <OPTION VALUE="1" value="1:2:3:4"> 1-4  
   <OPTION VALUE="2" value="5:6:7:8"> 5-8  
   <OPTION VALUE="3" value="9:10:11:12"> 9-12
</SELECT>

at server side in case of php, use functions like explode [array] = explode([delimeter],[posted value]);

$values = explode(':',$_POST['val']

the above code return an array have only the numbers and the ':' get removed

Answer 9

I did this by using data attributes. Is a lot cleaner than other methods attempting to explode etc.

HTML

<select class="example">
    <option value="1" data-value="A">One</option>
    <option value="2" data-value="B">Two</option>
    <option value="3" data-value="C">Three</option>
    <option value="4" data-value="D">Four</option>
</select>

JS

$('select.example').change(function() {

    var other_val = $('select.example option[value="' + $(this).val() + '"]').data('value');

    console.log(other_val);

});

Answer 10

Simplest way to do this:

<select name="demo_select">
    <option value='{"key1":"111","key2":"222"}'>option1</option>
    <option value='{"key1":"333","key2":"444"}'>option2</option>
</select>

on controller decode the request value as given below:

$values = json_decode($request->post('demo_select'));
$val1 = $values->key1;
$val2 = $values->key2;
echo "Value 1: ".$val1;
echo "Value 2: ".$val2;

output for the first option:

Value 1: 111
Value 2: 222

output for the second option:

Value 1: 333
Value 2: 444

Answer 11

Use a delimiter to separate the values.

<select name="myValues">
<option value="one|two">
</select>

<?php>
$value = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'myValues');
$exploded_value = explode('|', $value);
$value_one = $exploded_value[0];
$value_two = $exploded_value[1];
?>

Answer 12

In HTML

<SELECT NAME="Testing" id="Testing">  
  <OPTION VALUE="1,2010"> One  
  <OPTION VALUE="2,2122"> Two  
  <OPTION VALUE="3,0"> Three
</SELECT>

For JS

  var valueOne= $('#Testing').val().split(',')[0];
  var valueTwo =$('#Testing').val().split(',')[1];
  console.log(valueOne); //output 1
  console.log(valueTwo); //output 2010

OR FOR PHP

  $selectedValue= explode(',', $value);
  $valueOne= $exploded_value[0]; //output 1
  $valueTwo= $exploded_value[1]; //output 2010

Answer 13

Duplicate tag parameters are not allowed in HTML. What you could do, is VALUE="1,2010". But you would have to parse the value on the server.

Answer 14

Instead of storing the options on the client-side, another way to do this is to store the options as sub-array elements of an associative/indexed array on the server-side. The values of the select tag would then just contain the keys used to dereference the sub-array.

Here is some example code. This is written in PHP since the OP mentioned PHP, but it can be adapted to whatever server-side language you are using:

<FORM action="" method="POST">
    <SELECT NAME="Testing">  
        <OPTION VALUE="1"> One </OPTION> 
        <OPTION VALUE="2"> Two </OPTION>
        <OPTION VALUE="3"> Three </OPTION>
    </SELECT>
</FORM>

PHP:

<?php
$options = array(
    1 => array('value1' => '1', 'value2' => '2010'),
    2 => array('value1' => '2', 'value2' => '2122'),
    3 => array('value1' => '3', 'value2' => '0'),
);
echo 'Selected option value 1: ' . $options[$_POST['Testing']]['value1'] . '<br>';
echo 'Selected option value 2: ' . $options[$_POST['Testing']]['value2'] . '<br>';

Answer 15

This may or may not be useful to others, but for my particular use case I just wanted additional parameters to be passed back from the form when the option was selected - these parameters had the same values for all options, so... my solution was to include hidden inputs in the form with the select, like:

<FORM action="" method="POST">
    <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="OTHERP1" VALUE="P1VALUE">
    <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="OTHERP2" VALUE="P2VALUE">
    <SELECT NAME="Testing">  
        <OPTION VALUE="1"> One </OPTION> 
        <OPTION VALUE="2"> Two </OPTION>
        <OPTION VALUE="3"> Three </OPTION>
    </SELECT>
</FORM>

Maybe obvious... more obvious after you see it.

Answer 16

you can use multiple attribute

<SELECT NAME="Testing" multiple>  
 <OPTION VALUE="1"> One  
 <OPTION VALUE="2"> Two  
 <OPTION VALUE="3"> Three