sorting a dropdown

[drewbie]

hi, ive been able to populate my dropdown with the submitted option selected, but how can keep the order? example: the dropdown's original order is 01, 02, 03, 04...30, 31. then, you choose 03 for the day, hit submit, now the order will be 03, 01, 02, 04, 05...30, 31. how can i change my code to preserve the order? javascript needed? thanks! oh and how do i re-write the first line properly, because i know im supposed to use $POST['day'] instead of $POST[day] but it didnt like the single quotes...

$day_select = "<select size=\"1\" name=\"day\"><option value=\"$_POST[day]\">$_POST[day]</option>";
for ($i=1; $i<32; $i++) {
    if ($i<10){
        $i = '0' . $i;
        }
if ($_POST[day] == $i){
        $day_select .= "<option value='$i' selected>$i</option>\n";
        }
        else{
    $day_select .= "<option value='$i'>$i</option>\n";
    }
    }
$day_select .= '</select>';

[zevacronet]

try

$day = $_POST['day'];
day_select = "<select size=\"1\" name=\"day\"><option value=\"$day">$day</option>";

not sure about the other question

[drewbie]

yea but how do i write without changing the variable name?

[zevacronet]

whats the difference?

[spirp]

If you do it like this:

$day_select = "<select size=\"1\" name=\"day\">\n";
for ($i=1; $i<32; $i++) {
    if (10>$i) {
        $i = "0".$i;
    }

if ($_REQUEST['day'] == $i) {
    $option_extra = " selected";
} else {
    $option_extra = "";
}

$day_select .= "  <option value=\"$i\"$option_extra>$i</option>\n";
}   

$day_select .= "</select>\n";

you don't need to change any variables, the dropdown is created without changing the order of the <option>s.. Don't know if this is what you need, but I hope it is.. 🙂

Good luck,
Olle

[drewbie]

zevacronet, you understood what i said. so i guess my question is, am i going to have to change my $_POST variable names so i can use them, i didnt want to because i have quite a few and that would just be ten extra lines of code to change all their names, ya know? spirp, thanks for replying but your code does the same that mine does, the order isn't preserved, the SELECTED item will be at the top of the dropdown. i think this is a javascript job, thanks guys

[spirp]

Eh. What browser are you using if that's your experience? The code I posted generates (at least in my IE 6.0) a dropdown, containing 01-31, with the selected item shown, but not at the top. if I unfold it (click the litte arrow-thingie), the list is shown from 01-31 and the selected item is where it's supposed to be, between selected-1 and selected+1.

The difference between my code and yours btw is quite obvious:

Before the for-loop you add an <option>-tag:

$day_select = "<select size=\"1\" name=\"day\"><option value=\"$_POST[day]\">$_POST[day]</option>";
//                                             ^^^^^ here it is

containing the selected value, but it's not selected, the selection occurs further down in your code, which at the same time creates code-confusion, you have two <option>-tags with the same name.

The browser should render the dropdown-box (or actually the select-item, the dropdown is the "windows" way to display it. Using Tk or so it might just as well be something else..) as the page source specifies, in the same order as the elements are in the source, therefor Javascript is not very useful here from my point of view.

My code doesn't do this, for better or for worse, but they don't do the same thing. "Thanks" to the missing <option>-tag in my code order is preserved.

// Olle