Repopulating Combo Box

[hackersapien]

Hi,

I've looked for an answer everywhere before posting this question.Basically I have multiple select combo-box whcih inserts data into a mysql database, everything works fine in the insertion.

This is the html for the combo box

<select name="insurancecovers[]" size=7 multiple id="insurancecovers[]">
				  <option Value="No Cover" selected>No Cover</option>
				<option Value="Accident" >Accident</option>
				<option Value="Medical">Medical</option>
				<option Value="Car">Car</option>
				<option Value="Household">Household</option>
				<option Value="Funeral">Funeral</option>
				<option Value="Life">Life</option>
				</select>

The information is saved in the table field seperated by a coma:

Accident,Medical,Car

The problem am having is in the repopulating of the combo box in the edit mode of the application, such that if somebody had selected Accident,Medical,Car then those options are the selected ones with the rest not selected but still visible i.e.

<select name="insurancecovers[]" size=7 multiple id="insurancecovers[]">
				  <option Value="No Cover">No Cover</option>
				<option selected Value="Accident" >Accident</option>
				<option selected Value="Medical">Medical</option>
				<option selected Value="Car">Car</option>
				<option Value="Household">Household</option>
				<option Value="Funeral">Funeral</option>
				<option Value="Life">Life</option>
				</select>

this is the code I have written but it don't work too good since it displays multiple values without displaying the unselected values:

//code to query database

$insuranceCovers=trim($row['insurancecovers']);
$arrInsuranceCovers=explode(",",$insuranceCovers);

$sqlIns="SELECT * FROM insurance_covers"; 
				$db->setFetchMode(DB_FETCHMODE_ASSOC);
				$result = $db->query($sqlIns);
				if (DB::isError($result)) {
					die ("Error executing query ".$result->getMessage());
				}

			$i=0;
			while($row = $result->fetchRow()){
				$covers=$row['cover'];

				foreach($arrInsuranceCovers as $value){
					if($value==$covers){
						echo "<option selected value=\"$value\">$value</option>";
					}else{
						echo "<option value=\"$covers\">$covers</option>";
					}
				}

			}

Any help from you guys would really be nice.

Cheers

[bogu]

Why do u add that foreach?
Get it out

foreach($arrInsuranceCovers as $value){ 
    if($value==$covers){ 
        echo "<option selected value=\"$value\">$value</option>"; 
    }else{ 
        echo "<option value=\"$covers\">$covers</option>"; 
    } 
}

and add this code

$selected = "";
if (in_array($row['cover'],$arrInsuranceCovers)) {
    $selected = "selected";
}
echo "<option value=\"{$value}\" {$selected}>{$value}</option>";

assuming that select extract all the listbox value and $arrInsuranceCovers is the array with the values selected by user ...

[MarkR]

Perhaps you meant a select box, not a combo box.

HTML does not support combo boxes.

Combo boxes allow you to select a predefined option OR add your own as text. HTML does not contain an input type which does this.

Mark

[hackersapien]

MarkR wrote:

Perhaps you meant a select box, not a combo box.

HTML does not support combo boxes.

Combo boxes allow you to select a predefined option OR add your own as text. HTML does not contain an input type which does this.

Mark

Sorry about that, I meant a multiple select box, my VB6 programming background seems to sneak in occasionally 🙂

[hackersapien]

bogu wrote:

Why do u add that foreach?
Get it out

foreach($arrInsuranceCovers as $value){ 
    if($value==$covers){ 
        echo "<option selected value=\"$value\">$value</option>"; 
    }else{ 
        echo "<option value=\"$covers\">$covers</option>"; 
    } 
}

and add this code

$selected = "";
if (in_array($row['cover'],$arrInsuranceCovers)) {
    $selected = "selected";
}
echo "<option value=\"{$value}\" {$selected}>{$value}</option>";

assuming that select extract all the listbox value and $arrInsuranceCovers is the array with the values selected by user ...

Thanks a lot bogu, the code you posted worked perfectly!!