Setting a List Box item via PHP

Anon

Most of us have seen how to set a text box value on a Form with a PHP variable like :

When you pass "telephone_var" as a hidden variable to the Form, the text box will pick up the value and display it.

But what about List Boxes? Is it possible to set the List Box default selection using this method?

Let's say you have a set of choices in a List Box for the user to make and you want to set the <OPTION SELECTED> programatically with a hidden variable you pass to the form.

There is no "VALUE=" parameter for List Boxes.

Anyone ever try to do this, or know how?

The same technique would probably also apply to Radio Buttons.

Anon

I can't do the code off the top of my head - perhaps someone else can give you more specifics, but yes this is possible and relatively painless.

basically for the options list you need to do something like:

echo "<OPTION";
if ($value == $thisvalue) echo " SELECTED"; //note space//
echo ">".$thisvalue;

craig

Anon

Thanks, Craig.

After some experimentation, what I got to work very nicely was :

<?
if ($category == "XYZ")
echo "<OPTION SELECTED>XYZ";
else
echo "<OPTION>XYZ";
?>

So if the hidden variable ($category) passed to the Form == "XYZ" then XYZ is selected by default in the list.

My next step is to see if I can reduce this "if - else" construction using the conditional (?) operator. I don't know if PHP supports this operator or not.

I never thought I would use this operator, since it's about as clear as mud, but in this case, since I have about 30 selections in this particular List Box, it would really help.

I'm going to try something like:

<?
echo ($category == "XYZ") ?
"<OPTION SELECTED>XYZ" : "<OPTION>XYZ";
?>

But it looks like the actual operator symbol "?" may gum up the works here.