preserve the value of a dropdown listbox after submittion

[cretam]

Hi,
I have seached the forums and google but I can't seem to find out the answer to my problem.
Can someone please tell me when you are doing a form and after it is submitted it comes back with an error because they forgot to complete a field how to keep the listbox with the value the user selected so the user doesn't have to go back and select their choice again.

ie. listbox on my form
<p> <label><font color="red" size="+1"><tt><b>*</b></tt></font>Drivers Licence </label>
<select name="driverlicence">
<option value='select' selected="selected">Select</option>
<option value='yes'>Yes</option>
<option value='no'>No</option>
</select>
</p>

[laserlight]

One lazy method is to print another option with the value the user submitted and set that to selected="selected". A less lazy approach is to print selected="selected" for the option that matches the value the user submitted.

[cretam]

Thank you for replying Laserlight.
I must say I still don't really understand. Do you know of a tutorial where I can look at with an example?

[laserlight]

An example would be:

<select name="driverlicense">
<?php
$selected_option = isset($_POST['driverlicense']) ? $_POST['driverlicense'] : '';
$array = array('' => 'Select', 'yes' => 'Yes', 'no' => 'No');
foreach ($array as $key => $value)
{
    echo '<option value="' . $key . '"';
    if ($selected_option == $key)
    {
        echo ' selected="selected"';
    }
    echo '>' . $value . "</option>\n";
}
?>
</select>

Of course, you might want to not show the 'Select' option after the user has made a selection. A possible way of handling that is:

<select name="driverlicense">
<?php
if (empty($_POST['driverlicense']))
{
    $selected_option = '';
    echo '<option value="" selected="selected">Select</option>' . "\n";
}
else
{
    $selected_option = $_POST['driverlicense'];
}
$array = array('yes' => 'Yes', 'no' => 'No');
foreach ($array as $key => $value)
{
    echo '<option value="' . $key . '"';
    if ($selected_option == $key)
    {
        echo ' selected="selected"';
    }
    echo '>' . $value . "</option>\n";
}
?>
</select>

[cretam]

Thank you Laserlight. Can you tell me when you wouldn't want to show what they have selected ie. your second example.
Thanks.

[laserlight]

The second example does show what was selected, except that it does it solely with the selected="selected" instead of printing a redundant option.

[cretam]

Thank you Laserlight. I have used your code to do my listboxes. Can I ask you to help me with this code for checkboxes.
<p><strong><font color="red" size="+1"><tt><b>*</b></tt></font>
Select regions you are willing to work in:</strong></br></br><?php

while ($region = mysql_fetch_array($regions)) {

$rid = $region['id'];

$rname = htmlspecialchars($region['name']);

echo "<input type='checkbox' name='regions[]' value='$rid' />$rname </p>\n";
}

?>

[laserlight]

What do you have problem with? Can you understand my code examples?

[cretam]

Hi Laserlight,
Thank you for your reply. I can understand your code examples. The difference to this one is the checkboxes and information is coming from the database whereas the other were simple listboxes.

Thank you in advance.
Cheers
Tammy