How to Display Selected Item in Bootstrap Button Dropdown Title

As far as i understood your issue is that you want to change the text of the button with the clicking linked text, if so you can try this one: http://jsbin.com/owuyix/4/edit

 $(function(){

    $(".dropdown-menu li a").click(function(){

      $(".btn:first-child").text($(this).text());
      $(".btn:first-child").val($(this).text());

   });

});

As per your comment:

this doesn't work for me when I have lists item <li> populated through ajax call.

so you have to delegate the event to the closest static parent with .on() jQuery method:

 $(function(){

    $(".dropdown-menu").on('click', 'li a', function(){
      $(".btn:first-child").text($(this).text());
      $(".btn:first-child").val($(this).text());
   });

});

Here event is delegated to static parent $(".dropdown-menu"), although you can delegate the event to the $(document) too because it is always available.


Updated for Bootstrap 3.3.4:

This will allow you to have different display text and data value for each element. It will also persist the caret on selection.

JS:

$(".dropdown-menu li a").click(function(){
  $(this).parents(".dropdown").find('.btn').html($(this).text() + ' <span class="caret"></span>');
  $(this).parents(".dropdown").find('.btn').val($(this).data('value'));
});

HTML:

<div class="dropdown">
  <button class="btn btn-default dropdown-toggle" type="button" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="true">
    Dropdown
    <span class="caret"></span>
  </button>
  <ul class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="dropdownMenu1">
    <li><a href="#" data-value="action">Action</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" data-value="another action">Another action</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" data-value="something else here">Something else here</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" data-value="separated link">Separated link</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

JS Fiddle Example