How to get all selected values from <select multiple=multiple>?

ES6

[...select.options].filter(option => option.selected).map(option => option.value)

Where select is a reference to the <select> element.

To break it down:

  • [...select.options] takes the Array-like list of options and destructures it so that we can use Array.prototype methods on it (Edit: also consider using Array.from())
  • filter(...) reduces the options to only the ones that are selected
  • map(...) converts the raw <option> elements into their respective values

Actually, I found the best, most-succinct, fastest, and most-compatible way using pure JavaScript (assuming you don't need to fully support IE lte 8) is the following:

var values = Array.prototype.slice.call(document.querySelectorAll('#select-meal-type option:checked'),0).map(function(v,i,a) { 
    return v.value; 
});

UPDATE (2017-02-14):

An even more succinct way using ES6/ES2015 (for the browsers that support it):

const selected = document.querySelectorAll('#select-meal-type option:checked');
const values = Array.from(selected).map(el => el.value);

No jQuery:

// Return an array of the selected opion values
// select is an HTML select element
function getSelectValues(select) {
  var result = [];
  var options = select && select.options;
  var opt;

  for (var i=0, iLen=options.length; i<iLen; i++) {
    opt = options[i];

    if (opt.selected) {
      result.push(opt.value || opt.text);
    }
  }
  return result;
}

Quick example:

<select multiple>
  <option>opt 1 text
  <option value="opt 2 value">opt 2 text
</select>
<button onclick="
  var el = document.getElementsByTagName('select')[0];
  alert(getSelectValues(el));
">Show selected values</button>

The usual way:

var values = $('#select-meal-type').val();

From the docs:

In the case of <select multiple="multiple"> elements, the .val() method returns an array containing each selected option;