Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites

Creating <SELECT> Fields

An HTML SELECT tag allows you to list several options that appear as a pull-down menu. I am often in the situation of creating the contents of the list on the fly. Sometimes the contents are pulled from a database, such as for choosing from among users in a Web application. Other times the contents are generated, such as choosing month, day, and year. There are two aspects to this problem. First, there is the fairly simple problem of creating all the values for the OPTION tags. This is best accomplished in a loop. The second issue deals with preselecting one of the options.

Regardless of the source of the contents, database or otherwise, the technique is similar. To illustrate, I'll develop a function for generating three ...