countries and counties in database from option boxes

tbobker

I have copied two select boxes that contain contries and counties. But really i want them in the datbase so that i can query them.

I was wondering how i can somehow parse or split the values between the <option> tags and create some sort of array so that i can i suppose do multiple queries on the database using ALTER to create new fields and insert new data.

Just seems like a bit of a drag manually inserting these values into the datbase individualy.

alimadzi

Yeah, you can definitely do that. Do you have tables created already? You'll need two tables: one for countries and one for counties. Store the HTML output of your page in a PHP variable and use preg_match_all() to build an array of values...

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match-all.php

Then loop through the array with foreach() and build an insert query for each value.

Give it a shot and let us know if you have more questions.

tbobker

Well i didnt completely do what you suggested, but after i had posted the question i had an idea:

Like you say put the whole thing into a variable.
then str_replace() on the ending </option> tag with a |
then i can strip_tags() and get rid of anyother tags there
then explode on | to get an array and yes use foreach to loop through array and insert into database.

alimadzi

Yeah, that sounds like it would work. Did it? Any other questions?