PHP populating Dropdown list - php

Question

I need some help with populating a dropdown list, I have been searching around to find solution with some trial and errors but I must admit, I never touch PHP. I have the following code but it does not display anything, I assume my problem is with the connection, so my question is how to build such a connection:
<?php
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT ProvinceNameFR FROM Province");
while ($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
echo "<option value='".$row1['value']."'>".$row1['value']."
</option>";
}
?>
Where do I go from that? I am involved in a project that someone else developed.
Thanks

Answer 1

You've got some work ahead of you. First, use MySQLi or PDO instead of MySQL. MySQL is deprecated and will eventually be removed in future versions. http://php.net/manual/en/book.mysqli.php
Some obvious mistakes. You're query is SELECT ProvinceNameFR FROM Province but you're trying to get $row1['value'] when you should be using $row1['ProvinceNameFR'] because that's the column you selected.
You also need to wrap your <option>'s with the actual <select> tag. You may already be doing that, I just don't see it here.
so
<?php
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT ProvinceNameFR FROM Province");
echo "<select>";
while ($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
echo "<option value='".$row1['ProvinceNameFR']."'>".$row1['ProvinceNameFR']."
</option>";
}
echo "</select>";
?>
This is assuming everything is working database side. If not try adding var_dump(mysql_error()); at the end. That should print out the latest error and help you find out what's going wrong.

Answer 2

I would recommend using PDO to connect to a MySQL db as the older mysql_query, mysql_connect systems are depreciated.
A very basic way to get started would be:
$db = new PDO('mysql:host=HOST;dbname=DATABASENAME', USERNAME, PASSWORD);
$query = "SELECT * FROM Province";
$stmt = $db->query($query);
$results['data'] = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
echo '<select>';
foreach ($results['data'] as $row){
echo "<option value='".$row['ProvinceId']."'>".$row['ProvinceNameFR']."</option>";
}
echo '</select>';
You also need the <select> html wrappers around the options. And your field names need to be set to match the what is in the table. I have also assumed that there should be an ID in the value field.