Contact form... drop down help!

[pmoz84]

Hi,

I am really new to PHP and I am after some help if possible.

I have a contact form (which I am using as a questionnaire) which works fine... it gathers data and emails it out.

The problem I have is when people don't fill out all of the mandatory fields...
I have a mix of free text fields and drop down menus.

If I partly fill in the form and click Submit, the form tells you that some field haven't been completed as expected, but it resets all of the data in the drop-down menus... how can I get this to keep the option selected?

The data in the free text fields is kept!

I'm completely lost on this, so any help is appreciated.

Thanks. Paul.

[bradgrafelman]

Simple example of how to handle this for static (e.g. not dynamically created via PHP) SELECT entities:

<?php $val = (isset($_POST['foo']) ? $_POST['foo'] : ""); ?>
<select name="foo">
  <option value=""<?php echo ($val == "" ? ' selected="selected"' : '') ?>>(Please Select)</option>
  <option value="bar1"<?php echo ($val == "bar1" ? ' selected="selected"' : '') ?>>Option #1</option>
</select>