Drop down box auto select - php

Question

I was wondering how one would go about having this code below to have the option from the user's profile to display the correct state. Right now it defaults to the blank line.
<select id="state" name="state" class="input-xlarge form-control">
<option value=""></option>
<?php
$result = $db->select("SELECT * FROM as_states ORDER BY statename ASC");
foreach($result as $country)
{
echo "<option value=\"";
echo $country['stateid'];
echo "\">";
echo $country['statename'];
echo "</option>";
}
?>
</select>
Someone told me on here in the past how to do it this way (below), which is the older PHP version and wanted to know how to make it work in the above statement.
<?php
$sql="SELECT * FROM countries ORDER BY countrypicks DESC,countryname ASC";
$result=mysql_query($sql);
$options="";
while ($row=mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$countryid=$row["countryid"];
$countryname=$row["countryname"];
$selected = ($countryid == $merchcountry) ? 'selected="selected"' : '';
$options.="<option value=\"$countryid\" $selected>$countryname</option>";
}
?>
<SELECT NAME="merchcountry">
<option>-------</option>
<? echo $options; ?>
</SELECT>
Thank you.

Answer 1

the html should look like
<option value="id" selected>name</option>
(or selected="selected" if you need to be xhtml compatible )
so something like:
echo "<option value=\"";
echo $country['stateid'];
if ( $country['stateid'] == $user_state ) echo " selected";
echo "\">";
echo $country['statename'];
echo "</option>";
also:
SELECT * FROM countries ORDER BY countrypicks DESC,countryname ASC
is overkill if you only need stateid and statename.