[Resolved] populating a drop down menu from ENUM

[dartcol]

I'm trying to get the values from the ENUM field in a table into a select drop down menu as part of a form. The problem I'm having is parsing the result. I'm pretty stuck despite the reading.

$sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM categories LIKE 'categories_name'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);


while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
	for ($i = 0; $i < mysql_num_fields($result); $i++) {
		printf ("<option>%s</option>\n", ($row[$i]));
	}
}
?>

This returns the values but puts them all together on one line. I know I need to cut out the enum(' and ',' and ') somehow and then get it into an array. My problem is that every way I try doesn't work and I'm wondering if I'm making some kind of basic mistake here.
Any help gratefully received.

---

Just to bring this thread to a close and point anyone looking for the solution to the right place keith73 has already provided a function that does just this.
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10227457&highlight=explode+AND+enum

[blindeddie]

I believe what you need to do is explode the enum field into an array and then loop through the array to create your select box elements.

mysql_num_fields() returns the number of fields in a result set. so essentially what you have happening now is that you are selecting 1 field from the database so it is dumping all that data into the one option statement.

try:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
$enumfield = explode(",",$row[0])
for ($i = 0; $i < count($enumfield); $i++) {
printf ("<option>%s</option>\n", ($enumfield[$i]));
}
}

I have not tested the code, just wrote it on the fly, but it should work