dynamic dropdowns

[Guest_imported]

Hi,
I'm dynamically building my dropdown (<select option>) with the code something like this:
<select name=&quot;1stSelect&quot;><option value=&quot;&quot; selected></option>
<script language=&quot;javascript&quot;>
<% using some java, I loop and populate the description and aName%>
var description= &quot;<%=description%>&quot;;
var s = &quot;<%=aName%>&quot;;
document.write(&quot;<option value='&quot; + description + &quot;&&&quot;+ s+&quot;'>&quot; + description);
<%} %>
</script>
</select>

The problem is I'm using the exact code to populate another select with the same items in the dropdown....

Since I'm looping through a lot of data, I'm wondering, is there a way to build these two selects inside one loop using the above code, to boost the performance?

Thanks a lot.

 

[iza]

ever thought of using arrays ??

 

[jaredn]

you can clone the node on the client-side:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/methods/clonenode.asp

or on the server side, rather than printing out each option, make on large string of all the options, and print it once, or, even better, place each option string in an array, and then write the array.join(&quot;&quot, only once for each box. jaredn@eae.net -

http://webfx.eae.net

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks Jaredn,

This is exactly what I need.

 

[Guest_imported]

jaredn,

I understand the clonenode, but what do you mean about the array.join(&quot;&quot, can you elaborate on the join?

thanks

 

[jaredn]

Well, first off, string concatenation is slow in js. So you want to do as little of that as possible. What you may wish to do, is store each select option string in an array inside your loop, and then join them:

somestr = myopsarray.join(&quot;&quot

then you can call:

document.write(somestr)

once for each select box... that could speed things up a bit jaredn@eae.net -

http://webfx.eae.net

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks a lot!