How to get the last selected option from a multiselect?

Question

I'm looking for a way to get the last user-selected option in a multiselect form using jQuery.

I'm not looking for the last item on the list, but for the last item the user clicked.

Answer 1

Something like this

var lastSelected = null;
$('.multiSelectOptions').click(function(){
    lastSelected = this.value;
});

Answer 2

Using this.value as in the answer above fails when the user has Ctrl+clicked and selected multiple items -- it returns the value of the first selection in the list, even if that was not the last clicked. Try this:

var previouslySelected = [];
$("#myMultiselect").change (function() {
    // Get newly selected elements
    var currentlySelected = $(this).val();
    var newSelections = currentlySelected.filter(function (element) {
        return previouslySelected.indexOf(element) == -1;
    });
    previouslySelected = currentlySelected;

    if (newSelections.length) {
        // If there are multiple new selections, we'll take the last in the list
        var lastSelected = newSelections.reverse()[0];
    }
});