Selecting elements in dropdown menus

[D3V4]

Hi! I have three <select> elements that I use to enter data about day, month and year in a database. In a specific page of the site the user has the possibility to edit the date, and I would like the page to automatically select the correct elements of the menu based on the information in the database (so that, if the date inserted is 01-02-2011, the third <select> element would have the "2011" element already selected).

I was thinking about the following solution:

//
// retrieve information from the database and save it in the variables $day, $month and $year
//

if ($year == '2011') {
  echo '<select>
            <option value="2011" selected="selected">2011</option>
            <option value="2012">2012</option>
          </select>';
else if ($year == '2012') {
  echo '<select>
            <option value="2011">2011</option>
            <option value="2012" selected="selected">2012</option>
          </select>';
} 

but is there a better way to do this?

[centrex]

I had a similar requirement not too long ago; this is how I tackled it. I'm still a novice so there may be other/better options.

$my_year = '2008';
$all_years = array('2005', '2006', '2007', '2008', '2009', '2010', '2011', '2012');

$options = NULL;

foreach($all_years as $year) {
    if($year === $my_year) {
        $selected = ' selected="selected"';
    } else {
        $selected = NULL;
    }
    $options .= '<option value="' . $year . '"' . $selected . '>' . $year . '</option>' . PHP_EOL;
} 

Output:

    <select>
    <?php echo $options; ?>
    </select>

Result:

<select>
    <option value="2005">2005</option>
    <option value="2006">2006</option>
    <option value="2007">2007</option>
    <option value="2008" selected="selected">2008</option>
    <option value="2009">2009</option>
    <option value="2010">2010</option>
    <option value="2011">2011</option>
    <option value="2012">2012</option>
</select>

[cranial-bore]

Centrex is pretty well on the money, but as NULL gets cast to an empty string when being used in building $options you might as well make it an empty string to begin with.

The ternary operator is also handy in this situation to have a more compact line.

foreach($all_years as $year) {
  $selected = ($year == $my_year) ? ' selected="selected"' : '';
 
  //...
} 

[Cups]

Here is a function I found years ago and used for a long while. It goes to the db and gets elements for your droplist and matches to the one you want.

function ListboxMatch($size, $name, $query, $matchtothis) { 
mysql_select_db($dbname,$mysql_link);

$qry = mysql_query($query,$mysql_link); 
    if (mysql_num_rows($qry) > 0) 
        { echo "<SELECT SIZE='".$size."' NAME='".$name."'>" , PHP_EOL;
             while (list($value, $text) = mysql_fetch_row($qry)) 
                { echo "\t<OPTION VALUE='".$value."'";
                     if ($value == $matchtothis) 
                    { echo " SELECTED"; } 
                                        echo ">".$text."</option>" . PHP_EOL; 
                } echo "</SELECT>" . PHP_EOL;
         } else echo "No data in listbox" . PHP_EOL;
     mysql_free_result($qry); 
} 

No guarantee all these mysql_* functions are correct or still exist - but might give you some ideas - it clearly needs some cleaning up (all caps for html elements, wtf?), but still it should work.

$this_person = 7; // from get or post or session etc

// get 2 things, the value and the text you want to display
$query = "select id, name from people order by name";

// it echoes everything to the screen when called, so put this 
// line in the correct place
ListboxMatch(1, 'people', $query, $this_person); 

I remember taking this idea and improving it somewhat but I cannot remember where the code is.

[D3V4]

I've used centrex's solution and improved it with cranial-bore's suggestions, and it works perfectly. Thank you