html form drop-down option read from dat file

[slash5]

Hi,

I'm having a problem trying to get my html form drop down menu to reference its options from my mini database which is a .dat file.

I've got my script reading between keywords I've set in my database, and it can print all the text between those keywords. ie. print $dates;

But the problem is when I try to use this information in the function that contains my html form:

        <select name=\"Date selection\">
        <option value=\"0\">SELECT A DATE</option>
        <option value=\"$dates[1]\">$dates[1]</option>
        <option value=\"$dates[2]\">$dates[2]</option>
        </select>

Doing the above gives me the first letter of the text. So if the word I want to display is Thursday then this what I get: $dates[1] is T, $dates[2] is H...and so on.

Can someone please tell me how I can put each line from my dat file into each option of my drop down menu? The important thing to note is that I have other text in this file that I don't want to display for this, hence the keywords.

BTW, I don't have access to a real database yet, that's why I'm trying to use this dat file.

Any help would be appreciated

[TheDefender]

Without seeing the actual data, I can only speculate, but here goes...

Let's say your data comes out like this: "Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday" and you use the fopen() function to get that data, then it puts it into a string, and not into an array.

So, if you tried to call the data using the $dates[1], $dates[2] etc... Then, it does just what you are showing, and treats each character in the string as an array element. You would have to use explode to turn the string into an array.

$dates = explode(" ", $dates);

Then, your output would go as follows:
$dates[0] = Thursday
$dates[1] = Friday
etc....

Make sense?

The bottom line is that without seeing the code or dat file, that's the best I can do for you.

[slash5]

Hi Defender,

I tried explode() but it didn't work.
Below is how I was trying to get the script to work. As it is the script below makes the first dropdown option $perf_show[1] = T , which is the first letter from the first date in the database Thursday.

Hope you can help. It's so frustrating getting soo close.

Regards,
Chris

This page comes from a page that allows the visitor to select a performer, so the "if ($perf == 1)"below tells this page what performer they want to see and to grab the dates for that performers shows from the database.

<?

$performer_dbase = "/library/webserver/documents/program/perf_dbase.dat";
$perf_dbase = @file($performer_dbase) or die("<b>Could not open database.</b>");

function showdates($array, $keyword) {

 foreach ($array as $i => $line) {

  if (trim($line) == "<$keyword>") {

   $i++;

   break;

  }

 }

 $array[$i] = trim($array[$i]);

 while ($array[$i] != "</$keyword>") {

  $temp = stripslashes($array[$i]);

  $dates .= "\n$temp";

  $i++;

  $array[$i] = trim($array[$i]);

 }

 return $dates;

}

if ($perf == 1) {
$perf_show = showdates($perf_dbase, "performer1_showtime");
step1();
}


function step1(){

global $perf_show;

echo"
...this is just my html page which has the drop down menu.

the drop down menu was going to look like this:

<div align=\"left\">
        <select name=\"UserShow\">
            <option value=\"0\">CHOOSE A SHOW</option>
            <option value=\"$perf_show[1]\">$perf_show[1]</option>
          </select>
        </div>
        ";
}
?>

----------------
The perf_dbase.dat has this in it that I want use:

<performer1_showtime>
Thursday 2 September @ 9.30 pm
Friday 3 September @ 9.30 pm
Saturday 4 September @ 9.30 pm
Sunday 5 September @ 8.30 pm

</performer1_showtime>

[LordShryku]

You're returning a string, not an array. That's why you're getting letters...