Question: I'm doing some modifications to an existing form on web application. I can't have access to the form's code, but I can add scripts to the page, so I'm doing some customizations with the help of jQuery.

So, right now I have something like this:

```
jQuery( "#new_user" ).submit(function( event ) {

    event.preventDefault();

var fullname = jQuery("#user_name").val();
var email = jQuery("#email_primary").val();
var company = jQuery("#contact_customer").val();

jQuery.ajax({
        async: false,
        dataType: 'jsonp',
        url:"https://server.com/script.php",
        data: {"fullname": fullname, "email": email, "company": company},
        success: function(response){
        alert("json says " +response.res);
        }
});
    alert("hello");
});

```

Now, this works fine. I'm basically intercepting the form submission.

Problem is, **the ajax call is only executed if I keep the alert() call in there**, something obviously I do not want, it's just for debug. If I remove the alert() call, the form will submit but the ajax call will not work as it should. I have access to the web server that is supposed to receive the JSONP request, and it doesn't even get there.

The second alert actually never gets executed, but actually I don't need anything there, I just need to receive the GET on the webserver.

I have tried to add async:false to ajax() options, but no luck.

I'm a bit puzzled, and researched/experimented about it quite a bit. any tip appreciated, thanks in advance.

Answer: 
I found this to be the simplest:

```
d3.select("#objectID").node().value; 

```

Which is the text of the selected option in the following node: `<select id="objectID"></select>`

Note that `d3.node()` is documented at <https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Selections#node> and the `.value` property of an `HTMLInputElement` is documented on MDN at <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/HTMLInputElement>.
I've also seen 

```
d3.select("#objectID")[0][0].value

```

But I'm quite sure this is generally a bad idea...