PHP drop down menus help

Hello potential saviours,

I have just started to make a test site in php and have come to a bit problem.
I need to make a drop down menu that has been populated from a MySQL databse and
then have the relevant selecion posted over to a result page.

I know that there are examples of drop drown menus on this forum, but what i require is an
understanding of how these are done (like wot does ($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)) mean) because i
have used the example scripts that have been used but i keep getting errors. So in order for me to sort it
i need to understand it first.

If anybody can point me to online tutorials or recources that will teach me how to make a working dynamic
drop down menu, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advanced to who ever replies to this post.

Irf

First, remember that a dropdown menu is just another while() loop. The only thing that makes it different is the HTML.

Look over the below and see if it helps:



Now we need to actually get something we can use out of the 'resource' sitting in $result. To do this we're going to use mysql_fetch_array(). This will pull out one row of your result set. So let's say your pulling three city names from the above: New York, Chicago, and L.A. If you call



you're creating an array containing 'New York'. Call the same thing again, you get an array containing 'Chicago'.

Of course, you have to place this array into a variable to be able to get anything out of it, so now we've got



$row is now an array containing 'New York':



Which is all well and good for one row, but we've got three. Therefore, we want to loop through our results. Since mysql_fetch_array() will move itself down the list of rows in your resource, it will eventually reach the end. If you try to call it after that, it will return a boolean FALSE instead of an array. This is convenient for us, because we can use that to combine our array creation with our content loop, giving us



So the first thing that happens is that $row is set to whatever mysql_fetch_array($result) returns, which will either be an array or a boolean FALSE. If it's an array, the contents of the while() loop will execute, echoing your optionname. Then the while loop starts over, resetting $row to the next value of mysql_fetch_array($result). This gives us another array, so the loop echoes the next optionname. And so on, until you've gone through all your rows, and mysql_fetch_array($result) returns FALSE, telling the while loop there's nothing left and to pack it in.

And that's looping through query results. Making those results a dropdown is only a matter of changing the HTML around $row['optionname']. Just be sure your SELECT opening and closing tags are outside your while(), or you'll repeat them each iteration.