Keeping pull-down menu selection

jpschwartz

I've built my first PHP page, which works great except for one thing:

After the user selects an item from the pull-down menu and submits the form, when the page returns with the associated data, the pull-down menu doesn't show the last selection (it's blank again). How can I get it to show the last selection? You can see the page at http://topicalbiomedics.com/products/storesnearyou.php

Thanks,

Jim

nnichols

You need to use the value of $stateName to decide which value should be selected. The way you do it will depend on how you are building the SELECT object. If you are building it as static you need to do something like this -

if (isset($stateName)) {
/* use a variable variable to set selected state, so if $stateName
had a value of 'CA' then this would create a variable '$CA' with
the value 'selected'*/
$$stateName = 'selected';
}

echo '<select name="stateName" size="1">';
echo '<option>-------</option>'
echo "<option value=\"CA\" $CA>California</option>";
echo "<option value=\"CO\" $CO>Colorado</option>";
// and so on

What a pain in the backside that is.

If you build the select dynamically you can do something like this -

// get your data
$result = mysql_query('SELECT name, code FROM state ORDER BY name');

echo '<select name="stateName" size="1">';
echo '<option>-------</option>'

while ($row =mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$name = $row['name'];
$code = $row['code'];

if ($stateName != $code)
	echo "<option value=\"$code\">$name</option>";
else
	echo "<option value=\"$code\" selected>$name</option>";
}
echo '</select>';

Hope this helps 😉

jpschwartz

Thanks for the generous reply!! Your suggestions have definitely put me on the right path! I hadn't even thought of a dynamic form!

-Jim

jpschwartz

Well, I'm taking this one step at a time. I'm trying the static route first, but the script suggested above created a two-letter state code all mixed up with control characters, so the query didn't work properly (e.g.: http://localhost/~jim/storesnearyou.php?stateName=%5C%22CA%5C%22 [instead of .php?stateName=CA]).

Did the responder mean to say "variable variable"? I haven't been able to find any reference to that.

Did the responder mean to type "$$stateName"?

Here's my code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled</title>
<meta name="generator" content="BBEdit 6.5">
</head>
<body>

<h3>Stores Near You</h3>

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
	<tr>
		<td align="right">Select a State:</td>
		<td>

			<php?
			if (isset ($stateName)) {
			$$statename = 'selected';
			}
				echo '<select name="stateName" size="1">';
				echo '<option>-------</option>';
				echo "<option value=\"CA\" $CA>California</option>";
				echo "<option value=\"CO\" $CO>Colorado</option>";

				</select>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td align="right">Then click:</td>
		<td><input type="submit" value="Submit" border="0"></td>
	</tr>
</table>

</form>
<p></p>

<?php

// Connect to the database server
$dbcnx = @mysql_connect("localhost",
"root", "password");
if (!$dbcnx) {
echo( "<P>Unable to connect to the " .
"database server at this time.</P>" );
exit();
}

// Select the Stores database
if (! @mysql_select_db("Stores2") ) {
echo( "<P>Unable to locate the store " .
"database at this time.</P>" );
exit();
}

?>
<P>Here are all the stores selling our products in the state you selected.</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>

<?php

// Request the store names of all the stores
$result = mysql_query(
"SELECT StoreName1, StoreName2 , StoreAddress , StoreCity ,
StoreState , StoreZip , StorePhone
FROM tblStores WHERE StoreState = '$stateName'
ORDER BY tblStores.StoreZip");
if (!$result) {
echo("<P>Error performing query: " .
mysql_error() . "</P>");
exit();
}

// Display the name of each store in a paragraph
while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($result) ) {
if ( ( $row["StoreName2"] == "")) {
echo("<P>" . stripslashes($row["StoreName1"]) . "<br>");
} else {
echo("<P>" . stripslashes($row["StoreName2"]) . "<br>");
}

echo( $row["StoreAddress"] . "<br>");
echo( $row["StoreCity"] . ", ");
echo( $row["StoreState"] . " ");
$zip = $row["StoreZip"];

echo( substr($zip, 0, 5) . "<br>");
echo( $row["StorePhone"] . "</P>");

}

</body>
</html>

delamitri

This is a big time saver instead of using IFs and ELSEs, which i find painfully log for such a simple process. Use this instead:

$selected =($stateName == $code)? "selected":"";

echo "<option value=\"$code\" $selected>$name</option>";

This will save you loads of time!

Kevin

jpschwartz

In the reply above, how does the variable $code get set?

I'm still having trouble with the backslashes not getting rid of the quotes.