Seperate Dropdown For Each Row In dB??

[MachMedia]

Has anyone seen an example of creating a separate dropdown for each row in a dB?

What I am trying to do:

Create a separate dropdown for each row in a dB (Categories)

Then populate each dropdown with data from a separate table which correlates to each category.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[MachMedia]

I guess nobody helps unless you show that you have tried to solve the problem yourself first, which is understandable.

Well, here is the code for the dropdown I have been worlking on... So far it gives the appropriate category title to each dropdown. The trouble I am having is that it enters each of the products in the dropdowns 15 times, the amount of categories there are.

How can I get it to place each item in the dropdowns once?

Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated!

BEGIN CODE:

MYSQL_CONNECT($dbserver, $dbuser, $dbpass) OR DIE("Unable to connect to database");
@mysql_select_db( "$dbname") or die( "Unable to select database");
?>
<?
$result = mysql_query('select id, cat_name from category');

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo $row["cat_name"].":<br>";
$id = $row["id"];

echo '<select name=product[]>';

$XX = "data empty!";
$aku = mysql_query("SELECT category_id, item_name, item_id FROM category, item WHERE $id=category_id ORDER BY cat_name");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($aku))
{
$colom_name=$row["item_id"];
$colom_name2=$row["item_name"];

echo "<option value=$colom_name>$colom_name2\n";
}

if ($colom_name="")

{
print ("$XX");
}
echo "</select>\n";

print ("<br><br>");

}
mysql_free_result($result);