Php mysqli Listbox - php

Question

I have a list box and have 2 questions.
1st how can i still have the text to say Select a country?
2nd on my update page it displays the proper country but will not allow it to be change for it will not list any of the other countries in edit page
<?php
$sql = "SELECT countries.country_id, countries.country_name, users.user_country FROM countries, users
WHERE users.user_country = countries.country_id";
$result = query($sql);
?>
<select class="form-control input-lg box" id="country" name="country">
<?php
$i = 0;
while (($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) != false) {
?>
<option value="<?=$row["country_id"];?>"><?=$row["country_name"];?></option>
<?php
$i ++;
}
?>

Answer 1

Well, to have a default option not provided by your database call, you just need an HTML statement such as
<option value="">Select a country</option>
right below your <select> statement.
And we can't see your table definitions, but your SQL code seems to be picking the specific country that the user is associated with, so that there is only one country in the list. You probably need two queries: One that obtains the user's current country, and a second that obtains the entire list of countries.
After the first query, save the user's current countryid in a variable - say, $usercountryID.
Then, in your loop through the countries, compare each countryID to the user's country, like this:
while (($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) != false) {
if ($usercountryID == $row["country_id"]) $selected = " selected";
else $selected = "";
echo "<option value='{$row['country_id']}$selected>{$row['country_name']}</option>\n";
}
$selected could be defined many ways, of course, including in a conditional assignment statement. I omitted the $i counter, which isn't needed here, but, of course, you might need it later.