dynamic dropdowns

rtown

hey all

having bit of a snag, I am populating dropdown boxes from a db. I can get stuff into the dropdowns for the most part, but there are situations where there will be option a or b for the same dropdown, for example..the products I am displaying will have either flavour or scent or colour, but never a combination, so I want to validate whether anything exists in the corresponding tables and if not move on to the next criteria to see if it exists.

I tried this:
<?php
while($flav=mysql_fetch_array($f_query)){
$flavour=$flav["f_flav"];
if($flavour==""){
while($sc=mysql_fetch_array($sc_query)){
$scent=$sc["sc_scent"];
echo ("<option value='$scent'>$scent\n");
}
exit();
}
else{
echo ("<option value='$flavour'>$flavour\n");
}
}
?>
but regardless it will either display flavour or a blank dropdown, I understand why, because there aren't any records that are null, so how would I test to see whether there is a record at all for flavour, scent and colour...I am assuming on the MySQL side??????

Thanks ahead of time....

PHPdev

Well you can probably do this with the count() in your query. I am not totaly sure about your DB Tables so Ill try and improvise.

select coun(flavor) from products where product_number = X

this will tell me how many flavors product X has

Again without totaly knowing your Table Structre, you probably can do this with one Query

If you only have one table setup like

ProductName, ProductNumber, Flavor, Color, Sent

then all you have to do is select * from table where productNumber = X

This is NOT the best design...

To eliminate the blank dropdowns you can always populate some arrays, then use php to see if you need to display the <select> HTML.

Hope this helps... Let me know if I can be of more help...

PHPdev

rtown

thanks for the help, i gave myself a quick break then attacked it again later lastnight and got it. i had a table for each flavour scent and colour, i performed a separate query on each table and just create an if structure utilizing mysql_num_rows to see if there was any matches from that table, because if one matches the others won't (can only have one not a combo), then I just echo'd my <select> and populated through my while loop with mysql_fetch_array. the separate tables made it a bit easier in my logic, not sure if that's the best way to do, but for me being somewhat new, completing the task is the best way to do it...lol...thanks again for the reply!

ps-if you want to "see" what I did for kicks let me know😃