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Im looking for a simple script in javascript that i can extend, at a basic level Im looking to show 1 field based on which option from a <select> the user chooses.

<select id="options"> <option value="spoon">Spoon</option> <option value="form">Fork</option> </select> if select=spoon { <input>enter your favorite soup</input> } else { <input>Your gonna need a knife</input> } 

Simple JS is the key!

3 Answers 3

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I think i posted this somewhere else on SO, but couldnt find that post now. It could be something for you to build on.
Look ma, no jQuery! (yay!)

<body> <select id="mySelect" onchange="npup.doSelect(this);"> <option value="">Npup says 'select'</option> <!-- the option values are suffixes for the elements to show --> <option value="0">zero</option> <option value="1">one</option> <option value="2">two</option> </select> <!-- container for any elements that are to be in the game --> <div id="mySpecialElements"> <!-- these have ids that end with an index for easy retrieval in "findeElement" function below--> <div id="npup0" class="hidden">div 0</div> <div id="npup1" class="hidden">div 1</div> <div id="npup2" class="hidden">div 2</div> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> window.npup = (function (containerId, baseId) { // save the container of your special element var elementsContainer = document.getElementById(containerId); var baseId = baseId; function doSelect(select) { // get value of select var idx = select.selectedIndex; if (idx<0) {return;} var value = select.options[idx].value; // find element based on the value of the select var targetDiv = findElement(value); if (!targetDiv) { return;} // didn't find the element, bail // do magic.. hideAll(elementsContainer); showElement(targetDiv); } // retrieve some element based on the value submitted function findElement(value) { return document.getElementById(baseId+value); } // hide all element nodes within some parent element function hideAll(parent) { var children = parent.childNodes, child; // loop all the parent's children for (var idx=0, len = children.length; idx<len; ++idx) { child = children.item(idx); // if element node (not comment- or textnode) if (child.nodeType===1) { // hide it child.style.display = 'none'; } } } // display a certain element function showElement(element) { element.style.display = ''; } // hide all on page load (might want some extra logic here) hideAll(elementsContainer); // export api to use from select element's onchange or so return { doSelect: doSelect }; })('mySpecialElements', 'npup'); // give the routine a container id of your special elements, and the base id of those elements </script> </body> 
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Ops, thanks - fixed it. It made its way through because it "worked" (ff3.6.3, and many more browsers too I think).
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Something like this? it's called Chained Selects

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You can make use of the onchange attribute of the <select> element to execute some Javascript code on every change of the dropdown.

<select onchange="myFunction(this)"> 

(you see that I passed the dropdown element itself as method argument, this is just done for convenience)

You can use the element.options to get all options and element.selectedIndex to get the index of the currently selected option.

function myFunction(dropdown) { var selectedOption = dropdown.options[dropdown.selectedIndex].value; } 

You can use document.getElementById() to retrieve any element by id. Imagine that you've the following input elements:

<input type="text" id="foo"> <input type="text" id="bar"> 

then you can get them as follows:

var foo = document.getElementById('foo'); var bar = document.getElementById('bar'); 

You can use the element.style.display to change the CSS display property. A value of block means show and a value of none means hide. Now do the math:

function myFunction(dropdown) { var selectedOption = dropdown.options[dropdown.selectedIndex].value; var foo = document.getElementById('foo'); var bar = document.getElementById('bar'); if (selectedOption == 'spoon') { foo.style.display = 'none'; // Hide foo. bar.style.display = 'block'; // Show bar. } else { foo.style.display = 'block'; // Show foo. bar.style.display = 'none'; // Hide bar. } } 

To learn more about Javascript and HTML DOM, I recommend this tutorial.

2 Comments

Another approach is to have the event handler for changes to the selection drive a class name value on the form. Then you can control what's visible in each state via CSS. Messy of course if there are lots of options, but it means you let the browser's innards do the DOM work.
@Pointy: We can also suggest him jQuery. Just start simple ;)

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