how do you dynamically set select box values

jasonmills58

Here's what I have, and it works, but it ends up showing the value twice - the selected value, and the value when it appears in the select list...

<td class="formContent"><select name="global">
  <option selected><?php print $a_row['global'] ?></option>
  <option>0</option>
  <option>1</option>
  <option>2</option>
  <option>3</option>
  <option>4</option>
  <option>5</option>
  <option>6</option>
  <option>7</option>
  <option>8</option>
  <option>9</option>
  <option>10</option>
  <option>11</option>
  <option>12</option>
</select></td>

so you can see, if $global came back as 3, I would have '3' in the list twice. How would I convert that to echo this:

<td class="formContent"><select name="global">
  <option>0</option>
  <option>1</option>
  <option>2</option>
  <option selected>3</option>
  <option>4</option>
  <option>5</option>
  <option>6</option>
  <option>7</option>
  <option>8</option>
  <option>9</option>
  <option>10</option>
  <option>11</option>
  <option>12</option>
</select></td>

I have 8 of these select boxes, so I don't know if a huge switch/case statement is going to bog me down, but I'd love to see anything you can suggest.

cheers!
Jason

sid

if you just use numbers (i assume you want to do something with dates here) you can do the following:

 <td class="formContent"><select name="global">
<?PHP

for ($i = 0; $i <= 12; $x++) {
    if ($i == $a_row['global']) {
        $globalSelected[$i] = " SELECTED";
    }
    print "<option" . $globalSelected[$i] . ">" . $i . "</option>\n";
}

?>
</select></td>

this is how i do it - i hope this helps!

jasonmills58

thanks a lot sid, I'll give that a try. should that $x++ be $i++ though?

LordShryku

Think so. Though I always put a value to the option. It'll work like that, it's just a preference of mine...

for($i=0;$i<=12;$i++) {
   echo "<option value=\"".$i."\"";
   ($i == $a_row['global'])?" selected":NULL;
   echo ">".$i."</option>\n";
}

sid

yes and yes. it should be $i++ (sorry for that little glitch)

i also agree with your beloved lord - i usually explicitly give option values as well - i suppose it is just a cleaner way and facilitates changes later, as you may want to change the numbers in the drop down menu to month names later on for example. in this case the data passed on to the form handler would probably cause problems and bogus results.

jasonmills58

thanks a bunch guys, i ended up going with sid's original suggestion. Actually, all I ever need these to do is let the user choose between 0-12. Its for making bar graphs. The eight boxes work great. Here's a couple if you're curious.

<tr>
<td class="formContent"><select name="global">
<?php
for ($g = 0; $g <= 12; $g++) { 
	if ($g == $a_row['global']) { 
		$globalSelected[$g] = " SELECTED"; 
	} 
	print "<option" . $globalSelected[$g] . ">" . $g . "</option>\n"; 
} 
?>
</select></td>
<td class="formContent"><select name="payroll">
<?php
for ($p = 0; $p <= 12; $p++) { 
	if ($p == $a_row['payroll']) { 
		$payrollSelected[$p] = " SELECTED"; 
	} 
	print "<option" . $payrollSelected[$p] . ">" . $p . "</option>\n"; 
} 
?>
</select></td>
</tr>

cheers!