Option Menus

[losang]

I am writing a form that reloads itself using PHP_SELF if some of the fields are empty. The text fields are set when the page reloads itself because I use something like <input name=name value=$name>.

The problem is with the drop down option menu for states. It always defaults to the first value in the select list.

Does anyone know how to deal with this?

thank you,

lt

[daarius]

use:
<OPTION VALUE="WA" SELECTED="SELECTED">Washington</OPTION>

to have any value in drop down to be selected by default.

[Anon]

You have to do something like this:

<SELECT NAME="form_state">

<OPTION VALUE="CA" <? if ($form_state == "CA") { ?>SELECTED<? }?> >California</OPTION>

<OPTION VALUE="NV" <? if ($form_state == "NV") { ?>SELECTED<? }?> >Nevada</OPTION>

<OPTION VALUE="FL" <? if ($form_state == "FL") { ?>SELECTED<? }?> >Florida</OPTION>

</SELECT>

You get the idea. You have to conditionally add the 'SELECTED' attribute depending on what they had selected before you redisplayed the page.

-- Rich Rijnders
-- Irvine, CA US

[Anon]

Thanks to everyone who replied. Rich, that is the solution and it is simple. I should have thought of it. I forgot that you could embed php inside html using hte <? ... ?> tags.

One last question what are the '{' and '}' brackets for?

thanks,

lt

[Anon]

They contain the if branches. if you don't have 'em, php goes mad.

[Anon]

Dave is right. Some languages don't always require conditionals to be blocked (enclosed with '{}' or 'begin/end' etc) but I always put them in for readability and because it makes me feel better about the code ;-)

-- Rich Rijnders
-- Irvine, CA US