title: Bind existing select options to a Knockout view model
body: <p>I'm fairly new to Knockout.js, so this might be a stupid question.</p>
  
  <p>I'm reading through the Bindings documentation, and particularly the <a href="http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/options-binding.html" rel="nofollow"><strong>options</strong> binding</a>. It says that when applying the binding:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Any previous options will be removed.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Is there a way to preserve the existing options?</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;select data-bind="options: availableOptions, optionsText: 'name', value: selectedOption"&gt;
      &lt;option value="1"&gt;One&lt;/option&gt;
      &lt;option value="2" selected&gt;Two&lt;/option&gt;
  &lt;/select&gt;
  
  &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
      var option = function(name, value) {
          this.name = name;
          this.value = value;
      };
      var viewModel = {
          availableOptions : ko.observableArray([]),
          selectedOption : ko.observable()
      };
  &lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>