Select Box and arrays

webqueen79

I have a multiple select box that I need to populate with a record from a database.

Here is the select box:
<select name="Owned_Before" style="font-family:verdana; font-size:10px" multiple size="5">
<option value="ATV">ATV</option>
<option value="Boat">Boat</option>
<option value="RV">RV</option>
<option value="Snowmobile">Snowmobile</option>
<option value="Waverunner">Waverunner</option>
</select>

The record comes out like this:
$results['Owned'] = ATV|Boat|Snowmobile

I need to mark each option in the select box "selected" if it is in the database.

Please help! Thanks.

maxpup979

All you really need to do is put a check in each option that if the value of the option is in the array, mark it as selected. It may actually be easier if you converted the existing code to an array driven list. makes the comparisons a bit easier...

Let me see if I can clarify. Right now, you have a string that contains a delimited list of things that should be selected. If you convert that to an array, when you build your options, you can compare the value in the option to the values in the array using in_array. The concern is if you use a string match like substr, you can get multiple (wrong) matches, if the value of the option is also a part of another value. The other nice thing about making this array driven, is that you can easily and and remove elements.

geez...that sounds kind of confusing.

lets see...something like this should do the trick....

#Owned_Before_list is the list of types of vehicles
#$result is an array built using implode probably from the results in your query

foreach($Owned_Before_List as $key => $value){	
	print "<option value=\"$value\"";
	if(in_array($value,$result)){print "selected";}
	print ">".$value."</option>";
}
print "</select>";

webqueen79

This is what I have and it's not populating anything...

<select name="Owned_Before" style="font-family:verdana; font-size:10px" multiple size="5">
<?php
$Owned_Before_List = implode("|",$_POST["Owned_Before"]);
foreach($Owned_Before_List as $key => $value){

print "<option value=\"$value\"";
if(in_array($value,$results['Owned_Before'])){print "selected";}
print ">".$value."</option>";
}
?>
</select>