Country Drop Down

VertLime

Got some code from another site and I tried to modify it to fit.

It's supposed to get a (MySQL) country table, display it in a form and allow me to choose a country which I will put in the user table.

Here's the code part that I have a problem with:

<td><form method="post" action="update_profileck.php" font face='Verdana' size='2'>Country</td>
<td><font face='Verdana' size='2'>
             
<?
$query="SELECT * FROM country";
$result = mysql_query ($query);
echo "<select name=countryname value=''></option>";
echo "<option value=''>$country</option>";
echo "<option value='selected'></option>";

while($nt=mysql_fetch_array($result)){
echo "<option value=$nt[id]>$nt[countryname]</option>";
/ Option values are added by looping through the array /
}
echo "</select>"
?>
 Select from drop-down list.</td></tr>

</form>
</td>

It does everything except when I select a country the selection does not go into the $_POST array. How do I put it there?

I guess my code is not too elegant, but I'm new at this, give me a couple of months people.

NogDog

Either remove the value='' from your <option> tags, or else set its value with the PHP variable. (Whatever is assigned to the value attribute overrides whatever is between the <option> and </option> tags, so your code is currently setting the value for all countries to an empty string.)

PS: Please use this forum's [noparse]

...

[/noparse] tags around your code samples, as it makes them much easier to read.

PPS: Welcome to the forums. 🙂

VertLime

Hey NogDog thanx for the speedy reply.
I actually wanted to display the country from the user table and replace it with one that I pick from the country table.

VertLime

I think I didn't formulate my question properly.
Anyway I figured it out and it looks like this:

<?
$query="SELECT countryname FROM country ORDER by countryname";
$result = mysql_query ($query);

echo "<select name=countryname value=$countryname>";
echo "<option value=$country selected>$country</option>";

while($nt=mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo "<option>$nt[countryname]";
}
echo "</select>"

johanafm

You really should put that through a validator, such as the W3 validator.

selects can't have value attributes.
While some DTDs allow certain attributes to be non-quoted, it's still a good idea to quote them anyway, and it's against other DTDs.
There's also a good chance selected isn't ok: selected="selected"

and $nt[countryname] should be $nt['countryname']

VertLime

Thank you again johanafm.

The tip about validators is great!