combo box and database values

[Jim_Madrid]

Very new to PHP and would like to create a combo box in which:

1. that when a user types an new entry into the text box (a value that is sent to the database) it automatically will appear in the select box when the form is next used.

2. secondly and what is giving me the most problem is how do I create the code that basically tells the database the following "if the text box is empty (i.e. no new entry was typed in) then the database should take the value selected in the select box"

I have spent three days trying to figure this out and can´t

Your help would be greatly appreciated

[jpmoriarty]

it's probably not the best programming, but you get the idea:

  for ($e=0 ; $e < $num_employees ; $e++)
  {
    $employee_row = mssql_fetch_array($employees_result);
    if (@$employee && @$employee_row["name"] == $employee)
      echo "<option value=\"".$employee_row["name"]."\" SELECTED>".$employee_row["name"]."\n";  

    else 
      echo "<option value=\"".$employee_row["name"]."\">".$employee_row["name"]."\n";
  }

what that does is for a page that i have where it displays a list of employees - if there is a variable $employee defined, and it is the same as the option being written, then it selects that employee by default (ie i can call this page from somewhere else thus: show.php?employee="My Name" - then "My Name" will be selected in the drop down box. If i just view show.php though, the first item is selected by default.)

THis is similar to what you want and think you'll be able to hack at it and convert it into what you want.

To do the second bit you ask, i would imagine what you want is a line in your page that the action calls that says something like "if (@!$textbox)" - that way, if there's nothing in the text box you can tell it to do something else - note the @ sign to hidde any errors you may get.

The trick with all these things (i've found anyway) is to do them in HTML first - dont worry about the PHP side of it, just make sure that a) you know how to do a select list, then b) you know how to select a particular value from it. When you're sure you know how to do that, then you can work on incorporating it into your PHP. If you just dive into the PHP side of it, then you're not sure if it's not working because you're PHP programming is off or because its your HTML that's not quite right.

Hope that's of use...