drop down box population

adavis

I am trying to figure out if there is any way to build input for a drop down box on the fly.

What I want to do is allow the user to enter some search criteria in drop down boxes, then build a third drop down box with the search results.

I'm working on a scrip to build sports rosters. We have 10 sports, 5 boys (football, basketball, baseball, soccer, & golf) and 5 girls (cheerleading, volleyball, basketball, softball, and soccer) and 1-5 teams within each sport (Varsity to Middle school). I don't want to duplicate the athlete info, i.e. name, grade, height, weight, so have 2 db tables, one for athletes and one for rosters. The athlete table contains the personal info about the athlete, and the roster table about the sport (sport, team (Varsity etc...), Boys or Girls team, jersey number, position).

I want the user to search the athletes table for athletes already in the system before they try to enter a new athlete, based on grade and the first few letters of the last name. From that info, I want the user to be able to select from the list of possible matches or select 'enter new athlete'.

I know I can do this if I split it up in two pages, but does anyone know of a way to dynamically build the third drop down all on one page? I've looked at a few javascripts that build a second list from a first list, but am struggling with how I could incorporate this into my php script.

jackinva

You could have the third selection list generated by having the form submit itself to itself. If you don't want to have the user have to click a submit button as he/she selects each dropdown value, add onChange="submit()" to the select form field definition:

search.php contains:
<form method="post" action="search.php"...>
<select name="list1" onChange="submit()">
<option...>
...
</select>
...
<select name="list2" onChange="submit()">
<option...>
...
</select>
</form>

//php checks to see if form has been previously submitted
if (isset($POST['list1']) && isset($POST['list2'])) {
//search database and get result and use to populate third selection list
<form method="post" action="editperson.php">
<select name="existingperson">
<option...>
...
</select>
</form>
OR <a href="editperson.php?new=true">enter a new person</a>
}

Then the editperson.php script could be used to edit existing data or provide for new data entry by checking for existence of $_GET['new'].

The above is just a general idea of what you're talking about. It mixes both HTML and PHP without using the appropriate <?php and ?> so don't just copy and paste.

Hope this helps.

adavis

Thanks for the suggestion. I use a similar onChange elsewhere on the site.

The monkey wrench I'm struggling with is trying to avoid duplicate records due to misspelled or nick names. I have a student body table which I think I'm going to add a column to for nick name. About 40% of our athletes go by something other than their "official" name, like Joshua goes by Josh or William goes by Will or Abagail goes by Abby. Then there are the odd balls, who goes by an shortend version of their middle name. I'll just hit that table for the names and grade and then hit the athlete table for height and weight, and finally hit the roster table for jersey number, team, and age group. If I try to combine these tables, I'll have a lot of wasted space and duplicate information.

.                                   -------------
-------------     -------------     | rosterid  |
| studentid | --> | athleteid | --> | athleteid |
| lastname  |     | height    |     | jerseynum |
| firstname |     | weight    |     | sport     |
| nickname  |     | dob       |     | boy-girl  |
| grade     |     -------------     | team      |
-------------                       -------------

Anyway, I'll just trying to get this straight in my head. I'll take a stab at your suggestion, jackinva. Boy, when I get this finished, I think I'll see if any other schools would be interested in it. It's really grown into a monster, but maybe I'll get it tame enough to be useful. 🙂

I must admit though, that I've really learned a lot about PHP with this project. That was my main goal and I think by the time it's all done, I will have acheived it.