Using SQL and PHP to Populate a HTML Select form - php

Question

So I am currently having some difficulty using PHP to populate a select option on an HTML form. I need to have the select options filled with the data from my sql table and then I need to populate the selections into a different table in sql. First I will desribe the sql table that I am using. This is my first time using PHP and SQL so please keep that in mind if the code is completely off.
Note, I am able to connect to my database without any issues
SQL Data:
Table Name = "All Animals"
Column Name = "Group"
PHP Code:
$query = "SELECT *, dbo.All Animal.Group as allAnimal_Group
LEFT JOIN dbo.All Animal on dbo.Response.animalGroup = dbo.All Animal.Group
WHERE dbo.Response.animalGroup = %s";
$db->query($query, $Group);
$r = $db->fetch();
HTML and PHP Code:
<p>
<label for="animalGroup">Type</label>
<select name="Group" id="Group">
<option>Select a type:</option></select></p>
<?php
foreach($Group as $m)
{
?>
<option value="<?php echo $m['Group'];?>"><?php echo $m['animalGroup'];?></option>
<?php
}
?>
Thank you for looking and helping, I appreciate the assistance!

Answer 1

Your drop down list is closed before the php code. So edit it as below first.
<p>
<label for="animalGroup">Type</label>
<select name="Group" id="Group">
<option>Select a type:</option>
<?php
foreach($Group as $m)
{
?>
<option value="<?php echo $m['Group'];?>"><?php echo $m['animalGroup'];?></option>
<?php
}
?>
</select></p>
For the second part of your question, put this code inside html form and submit it to the server once the selection is made. So the complete code will be
<p>
<form action="your_file_name.php" method="post">
<label for="animalGroup">Type</label>
<select name="Group" id="Group">
<option>Select a type:</option>
<?php
foreach($Group as $m)
{
?>
<option value="<?php echo $m['Group'];?>"><?php echo $m['animalGroup'];?></option>
<?php
}
?>
</select>
<input type="submit" name="submitBttn" value="Submit">
</form></p>
in your_file_name.php file, write this to retrieve what is selected as,
$_POST['Group']
Then you can write sql code like "INSERT INTO table_name (column_name) VALUES ($_POST['Group'])"
More on html forms read this... http://php.net/manual/en/tutorial.forms.php

Answer 2

Update your query to use LIKE instead of = sign for wild character matching
$query = "SELECT *, dbo.'All Animals'.Group as allAnimal_Group
FROM dbo.'All Animals'
LEFT JOIN dbo.'All Animals' on dbo.Response.animalGroup = dbo.'All Animals'.Group
WHERE dbo.Response.animalGroup LIKE '%s'";
P.S You should change the foreach to use $r as iterator because you are storing database result in $r and not in $Group
foreach($r as $m){
}