# Select Menus

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## Select menus

- Basics
- Options
- Methods
- Events

The select menu is based on a native `select` element, which is hidden from view and replaced with a custom-styled select button that matches the look and feel of the jQuery Mobile framework. The select menu is ARIA-enabled and keyboard accessible on the desktop as well. View the data- attribute reference to see all the possible attributes you can add to selects.

By default, the framework leverages the native OS options menu to use with the custom button. When the button is clicked, the native OS menu will open. When a value is selected and the menu closes, the custom button's text is updated to match the selected value.

To add a select menu to your page, start with a standard `select` element populated with a set of `option` elements. Set the `for` attribute of the `label` to match the ID of the `select` so they are semantically associated. It's possible to accessibly hide the label if it's not desired in the page layout, but we require that it is present in the markup for semantic and accessibility reasons.

The framework will find all `select` elements and automatically enhance them into select menus, no need to apply a `data-role` attribute. To prevent the automatic enhancement of a select, add `data-role="none"` attribute to the `select`.

    <label for="select-choice-0" class="select">Shipping method:</label>
    <select name="select-choice-0" id="select-choice-1">
       <option value="standard">Standard: 7 day</option>
       <option value="rush">Rush: 3 days</option>
       <option value="express">Express: next day</option>
       <option value="overnight">Overnight</option>
    </select>

This will produce a basic select menu. The default styles set the width of the input to 100% of the parent container and stacks the label on a separate line.

Shipping method:

Optionally wrap the selects in a container with the `data-role="fieldcontain"` attribute to help visually group it in a longer form.

    <div data-role="fieldcontain">
       <label for="select-choice-1" class="select">Shipping method:</label>
       <select name="select-choice-1" id="select-choice-1">
          <option value="standard">Standard: 7 day</option>
          <option value="rush">Rush: 3 days</option>
          <option value="express">Express: next day</option>
          <option value="overnight">Overnight</option>
       </select>
    </div>

The select input is now displayed like this:

Shipping method:

An example of a select with a long list of options:

Your state:

## Vertically grouped select inputs

To create a grouped set of select inputs, first add `select` and a corresponding `label`. Set the `for` attribute of the `label` to match the ID of the `select` so they are semantically associated.

Because the `label` element will be associated with each individual select input, we recommend wrapping the selects in a `fieldset` element that has a `legend` which acts as the combined label for the grouped inputs.

Lastly, one needs to wrap the `fieldset` in a `div` with `data-role="controlgroup"` attribute, so it can be styled as a group.

    <div data-role="fieldcontain">
    <fieldset data-role="controlgroup">
    	<legend>Date of Birth:</legend>

        <label for="select-choice-month">Month</label>
    <select name="select-choice-month" id="select-choice-month">
    	<option>Month</option>
    	<option value="jan">January</option>
    	<!-- etc. -->
    </select>

    	<label for="select-choice-day">Day</label>
    <select name="select-choice-day" id="select-choice-day">
    	<option>Day</option>
    	<option value="1">1</option>
    	<!-- etc. -->
    </select>

    <label for="select-choice-year">Year</label>
    <select name="select-choice-year" id="select-choice-year">
    	<option>Year</option>
    	<option value="2011">2011</option>
    	<!-- etc. -->
    </select>
    </fieldset>
    </div>

Date of Birth:
Month
Day
Year

## Horizontally grouped select inputs

Select inputs can also be used for grouped sets with more than one related selections. To make a horizontal button set, add the `data-type="horizontal"` to the fieldset. Note that the buttons which trigger the select will resize depending on the currently selected option’s value. Note that browsers without support for `display: inline-block;` will group the selects vertically, as above.

`<fieldset data-role="controlgroup" data-type="horizontal">`
Date of Birth:
Month
Day
Year

## Using custom menus

the framework builds a custom menu based on the `select` element's list of options. We recommend using a custom menu when multiple selections are required, as , or when the menu itself must be styled with CSS.

You can optionally use custom-styled select menus instead of the native OS menu. The custom menu supports disabled options and multiple selection (whereas native mobile OS support for both is inconsistent), adds an elegant way to handle placeholder values, and restores missing functionality on certain platforms such as `optgroup` support on Android (all explained below). In addition, the framework applies the custom button's theme to the menu to better match the look and feel and provide visual consistency across platforms. Lastly, custom menus often look better on desktop browsers because native desktop menus are smaller than their mobile counterparts and tend to look disproportionate.

Keep in mind that there is overhead involved in parsing the native select to build a custom menu. If there are a lot of selects on a page, or a select has a long list of options, this can impact the performance of the page, so we recommend using custom menus sparingly.

To use custom menus on a specific `select`, just add the `data-native-menu="false"` attribute. Alternately, this can also programmatically set the select menu's `nativeMenu` configuration option to `false` in a callback bound to the `mobileinit` event to achieve the same effect. This will globally make all selects use the custom menu by default. The following must be included in the page after jQuery is loaded but before jQuery Mobile is loaded.

`

    $(document).bind('mobileinit',function(){
       $.mobile.selectmenu.prototype.options.nativeMenu = false;
    });

`

When the `select` has a small number of options that will fit on the device's screen, the menu will appear as a small overlay with a pop transition:

Shipping method:

When it has too many options to show on the device's screen, the framework will automatically create a new "page" populated with a standard list view for the options. This allows us to use the native scrolling included on the device for moving through a long list. The text inside the `label` is used as the title for this page.

Your state:

### Disabled options

jQuery Mobile will automatically disable and style option tags with the `disabled` attribute. In the demo below, the second option "Rush: 3 days" has been set to disabled.

Shipping method:

### Placeholder options

It's common for developers to include a "null" option in their select element to force a user to choose an option. If a placeholder option is present in your markup, jQuery Mobile will hide them in the overlay menu, showing only valid choices to the user, and display the placeholder text inside the menu as a header. A placeholder option is added when the framework finds:

- An option with no value attribute (or an empty value attribute)
- An option with no text node
- An option with a `data-placeholder="true"` attribute. (This allows you to use an option that has a value and a textnode as a placeholder option).

You can disable this feature through the selectmenu plugin's `hidePlaceholderMenuItems` option, like this:

    $.mobile.selectmenu.prototype.options.hidePlaceholderMenuItems = false;

Examples of various placeholder options:

Shipping method:
Shipping method:
Shipping method:

### Multiple selects

If the `multiple` attribute is present in your markup, jQuery Mobile will enhance the element with a few extra considerations:

- A header element will be created inside the menu and display the placeholder text and a close button.
- Clicking on an item inside the overlay menu will not close the widget.
- A ghosted, unchecked icon will appear adjacent to each unselected item. When the item is selected the icon will change to a checkbox. Neither icon will appear inside a single select box.
- Once 2+ items are selected, a counter element with the total number of selected items will appear inside the button.
- The text of each selected item will appear inside the button as a list. If the button is not wide enough to display the entire list, it is truncated with an ellipses.
- If no items are selected, the button's text will default to the placeholder text.
- If no placeholder element exists, the default button text will be blank and the header will appear with just a close button. Because this isn't a friendly user experience, we recommended that you always specify a placeholder element when using multiple select boxes.

Shipping method(s):

When a select is large enough to where the menu will open in a new page, the placeholder text is displayed in the button when no items are selected, and the `label` text is displayed in the menu's header. This differs from smaller overlay menus where the placeholder text is displayed in both the button and the header, and from full-page single selects where the placeholder text is not used at all.

Choose state(s):

### Optgroup support

If a select menu contains `optgroup` elements, jQuery Mobile will create a divider & group items based on the `label` attribute's text:

Shipping method:

## Theming selects

You can specify any jQuery Mobile button `data-` attribute on a select element, too. In this example, we're setting the theme, icon and inline properties:

Actions

The `data-overlay-theme` attribute can be added a select element to set the color of the overlay layer that the dialog-based custom select menus and the outer border of the smaller custom menus. By default, the content block colors for swatch A will be used for the overlays.

Size
Choose state(s):

## Calling the select menu plugin

The select menu plugin will auto initialize on any page that contains a select menu, no need for a `data-role` attribute in the markup. However, you can directly call the select menu plugin on any selector, just like any normal jQuery plugin:

    $('select').selectmenu();

### More in this section

- Form elements
- Form basics
- Form element gallery
- Text inputs
- Search input
- Slider
- Flip toggle switch
- Radio buttons
- Checkboxes
- Select menus
- Theming forms
- Native form elements
- Submitting forms