generic data-based drop down menu

[timandkitty]

I have a pile of drop downs on one page. They are generated based upon tables in a database. After searching, the user needs to be able to refine their search. They click a form button and go back to the original search page with all the fields retaining the values of the original search. Everything works GREAT except my drop downs! They refuse to remember anything!

here is the code:

<?php

$ddmenutable="";
$ddmenuname="";
$ddmenuvisible="";
$ddmenuvalue="";
$ddmenuorder="";
$ddmenuhyphensqty="";
$ddmenuselectvalue="";
$selected="";


 function find_value($particular_field)
 {
 echo $particular_field;
 }

function ddmenuhyphens($ddmenuhyphensqty){
$mxpx="1";
while ($mxpx <= $ddmenuhyphensqty)
 {
 echo "-";
 $mxpx++;
 };
};


function ddmenu($ddmenuselectvalue,$ddmenuname,$ddmenutable,$ddmenuvisible,$ddmenuvalue,$ddmenuorder,$ddmenuhyphensqty){

/*---------------------------------------------------------*/
/* The following test line prints out the correct          */
/* value for the variable! And the thing still don't work! */
/*---------------------------------------------------------*/

echo $ddmenuselectvalue;

   $query1 = "select $ddmenuvisible from $ddmenutable" ;
   $query1 = stripSlashes($query1) ;
   $result1 = mysql_query($query1);

   $query2 = "select $ddmenuvalue from $ddmenutable" ;
   $query2 = stripSlashes($query2) ;
   $result2 = mysql_query($query2);

   if ($result1==0 or $result2==0)
	echo("<b>Error ".mysql_errno().": ".mysql_error()."</b>");

   elseif (@mysql_num_rows($result1) == 0)
	echo("<b>No Information</b><br>");

   else
   {
	  for ($i = 0; $i <mysql_num_fields($result1); $i++)
	  {
		      echo "<select size=1 name=" . $ddmenuname . " style='font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 7pt'>
                        <option value=''>";
			ddmenuhyphens($ddmenuhyphensqty);
			echo "</option>\n";
	  }

  for ($i = 0; $i < mysql_num_rows($result1); $i++)
  {
	$rowvisible = mysql_fetch_row($result1);
	for ($j = 0; $j < mysql_num_fields($result1); $j++);

	$rowvalue = mysql_fetch_row($result2);
	for ($j = 0; $j < mysql_num_fields($result2); $j++)


		{	if ($rowvalue[$j] == $ddmenuselectvalue)
			{ $selected = 'selected'; }

		echo "<option " . $selected . " value=\"" . $rowvalue[$j] . "\">" . $rowvisible[$j] . "</option>\n";

		$selected = "";
		}
  }
                  echo "</select>";

}};
?>

.......

<?php ddmenu(find_value($propertyownershipdirection1),propertyownershipdirection1,lp_dir,lp_dir_desc,lp_dir,id,2); ?>

In the final line, If I substitute an actual value for the function find_value($propertyownershipdirection1)... (like 'E' for East), then the code works great. I know it's being accurately remembered because it echos correctly (as you can see by my comments above).

So why on earth is my code not working?

ANY HELP AT ALL WOULD BE AWESOME!!!!!!!

[Weedpacket]

Are you sure this code is working?

I see one loop that doesn't do anything at all (the first one that uses $j); I see another loop that starts a whole bunch of <select> boxes each containing a single option made up of a bunch of lines; followed by another loop that contains a nested loop (actually two, but like I say, one's a no-op). That one generates all the </select> tags.

On another note I see two queries and two resultsets being used where I suspect one of each would be perfectly sufficient:

$query="select $ddmenuvisible,$ddmenuvalue from $ddmenutable";

But I can't be certain of that because I suspect the whole table structure is wonky (Are you using fields instead of rows? - As far as I can see, the resultsets only have one field, so why use $j to loop over them?).

Oh, and check out str_repeat() - it'll save you a function.

[timandkitty]

Most of my code is borrowed and altered.

Those two lines are necessary (i think) to retrieve the "visible" options (not the values) for the SELECT menus. The visible values are placed into the array $rowvisible[$j]. That array is then called along with the value array ($rowvalue[$j]) and the $selected variable to fill the SELECT menu with content in this line:

echo "<option " . $selected . " value=\"" . $rowvalue[$j] . "\">" . $rowvisible[$j] . "</option>\n";

Does that make sense?

Thanks for the comment on str_repeat. It would probably clean up my code, but I don't think it will address the problem I'm having.

Also, the result sets contain the entire columns from $query1 and $query2. Sometimes 4 entries, sometimes 100.

   $query1 = "select $ddmenuvisible from $ddmenutable" ;

It actually works quite well, except that it won't remember the previous selection.

Any other ideas?