populate dropdown menu with unique info

mickfitz

Hello

I'm new to PHP/programming

However, I have somehow managed to make a script that will pull info from a mysql table/column and use that to populate a dropdown menu. It works perfect for what I'm doing ... but I'd like to take it a stage further. If for example it gets the data from a column of last/surnames ... I could have several entries for a surname. What I'd like it to do is 'filter out' any multiple entries and display the name once only. It took me a long to time to suss the script as it is ... so please ne gentle with any explinations

Here's what I've done and I hope you can help:

mysql_connect ("mysql.address.com", "dbname", "password");
mysql_select_db ("dbname");

$query = "select * from students";

$result = mysql_query($query);

$num = mysql_numrows($result);

echo "<font face=\"Arial\" color=\"red\">Students:</font><br>";
echo "<select name=\"Student\"student>";
echo "<option value='' selected>select the last name</option>";

/Dynamically generate drop-down list/
$i=0;
while ($i<$num):

$hello = mysql_result($result,$i, "lastname");
echo "<option value='$hello'>$hello</option>";

$i++;

endwhile;
echo "</select><p>";
?>

nnichols

Change your query to -

$query = "SELECT DISTINCT(lastname) FROM students ORDER BY lastname";

A neater way to write your dynamic select object would be -

// use 'single quotes' unless you need php to evaluate a $var within the string
echo '<select name="Student">';
echo '<option value="" selected>select the last name</option>';

/*Dynamically generate drop-down list*/

while ($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

$data = $row['lastname'];
echo "<option value='$data'>$data</option>";
}
echo '</select><p>';

Hope this helps 😉

mickfitz

You are a star my friend!

I've been messing around with this for months and got a reply in minutes after posting here.

Many many thanks ... I'd like to return the favour but I don't have the skill :-)

Mick

planetsim

I would suggest another way. But that looks like your best option.

mickfitz

Many thanks so far guys ... tis really appreciated.

OK I'm gonna be a bit cheeky and ask another question. The improvements have worked great.

However, there is 1000's of lastnames and the page takes a while to write ... it works great and the delay is expected.

But, is there a way of printing a message like:

"Page loading please wait" will the page is printed?