HTMLOptionElement

The HTMLOptionElement interface represents <option> elements and inherits all classes and methods of the HTMLElement interface.

Properties

Inherits properties from its parent, HTMLElement.

Name	Type	Description
defaultSelected	Boolean	Contains the initial value of the selected HTML attribute, indicating whether the option is selected by default or not.
disabled	Boolean	Reflects the value of the disabled HTML attribute, which indicates that the option is unavailable to be selected. An option can also be disabled if it is a child of an <optgroup> element that is disabled.
formRead only	HTMLFormElement	If the option is a descendent of a <select> element, then this property has the same value as the form property of the corresponding HTMLSelectElement object; otherwise, it is null.
indexRead only	long	The position of the option within the list of options it belongs to, in tree-order. If the option is not part of a list of options, like when it is part of the <datalist> element, the value is 0.
label	DOMString	Reflects the value of the label HTML attribute, which provides a label for the option. If this attribute isn't specifically set, reading it returns the element's text content.
selected	Boolean	Indicates whether the option is currently selected.
text	DOMString	Contains the text content of the element.
value	DOMString	Reflects the value of the value HTML attribute, if it exists; otherwise reflects value of the Node.textContent property.

Methods

Inherits methods from its parent, HTMLElement.

HTMLOptionElement.Option()

Is a constructor creating an HTMLOptionElement object. It has four values: the text to display, text, the value associated, value, the value of defaultSelected, and the value of selected. The last three values are optional.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
WHATWG HTML Living Standard The definition of 'HTMLOptionElement' in that specification.	Living Standard	No change from HTML5.
HTML5 The definition of 'HTMLOptionElement' in that specification.	Recommendation	A constructor, Option(), has been added. The form property can be the null value.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification The definition of 'HTMLOptionElement' in that specification.	Recommendation	The selected property changed its meaning: it now indicates if the option is currently selected and no longer if it was initally selected. The defaultSelected property is no longer read-only.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Specification The definition of 'HTMLOptionElement' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

[1] Prior to Gecko 7.0 (Firefox 7.0 / Thunderbird 7.0 / SeaMonkey 2.4), the label property incorrectly returned an empty string if not defined instead of returning the element's text content.

See also

• The HTML element implementing this interface: <option>.