"Checking" Specific Radio Buttons/Lists

Anon

Hi,

I have a bunch of radio buttons on a form

<< list/select/drop down menu here >>
#1: bad << o o o o o o o o o o >> good

<< list/select/drop down menu here >>
#2: bad << o o o o o o o o o o >> good

<< list/select/drop down menu here >>
#3: bad << o o o o o o o o o o >> good

<< list/select/drop down menu here >>
#4: bad << o o o o o o o o o o >> good

<< list/select/drop down menu here >>
#5: bad << o o o o o o o o o o >> good

something like that anyway, with the "o"'s representing the radio buttons, and the "<< list/select/drop down menu here >>" representing those drop down list things.

Anyway, the users can select a radio button in the form, and hit save or something. The value of the radio buttons are saved to a SQL database.

Later, the user can come back and change those properties if he'd like. But my problem is getting my file to look at the database and figure out which radio buttons should be checked, and then "check" the specific radio button with the "checked" property of that tag.

The radio buttons are half the problem. The other half lies with those drop down lists. Just like the radio buttons, I can't seem to figure out how to automatically select one depending on what the database says I should select.

Any clues on how to do it with PHP? Or, do I just need to include some JavaScript to put it all together for me? How would I do it?

Thanks a zillion,
-dave

Anon

You can do it in PHP. But only if you wrote the loop that put all the item thingies in the dropdown lists. For example:

/*****************************************
  There are three items in my list:
  $listitems[0] = "Alpha";
  $listitems[1] = "Bravo";
  $listitems[2] = "Charlie";
  $listitems[3] = "Delta";
******************************************/

// assume $blah contains the specified value you read from the database

echo "<select name=\"blah\">\n";
for ($i = 0; $i < count($listitems); $i++) {
   $str = $listitems[$i];
   $selected = ($str == $blah) ? " selected" : "";
   echo "<option value=\"$str\"$selected>$str\n";
}
echo "</select>\n";

You could do the same thing for the check boxes. Hope this helps.

Greetz,

Vincent Driessen
Venlo, The Netherlands

Anon

Hey thanks a lot for your help! That's exactly what I was looking for =)

Dave

Anon

Thanks Vincent. It's helped out a few of us.