How to put a default value in a dropdown in php? - php

Question

My code looks like:
<select autofocus="autofocus" name="SourceCountry" id="SourceCountry">
<?php populate_country();?>
</select>
I am populating all the countries of the world in that dropdown. I want a particular country name(say Japan) as default selected. I am not sure which attribute or property of the select tag does this. Tried to use many, but didnt work out. Can anyone suggest?
The code of populate_country goes like this:
if(connect_to_DB()==1)
$result=FetchCountriesList();
//mysqli_data_seek($result,0);
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result))
{
echo '<option value='.$row['CountryName'].'>'.$row['CountryName'].'</option>';
}
In FetchCountriesList(), there is a select query like:
SELECT distinct CountryName from Countries
Thanks

Answer 1

Edit your function and try to find Japan and set this one as Selected :)
if(connect_to_DB()==1) $result=FetchCountriesList();
//mysqli_data_seek($result,0);
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
if($row['CountryName'] !== "Japan") {
echo '<option value='.$row['CountryName'].'>'.$row['CountryName'].'</option>';
} else {
echo '<option value='.$row['CountryName'].' selected="selected">'.$row['CountryName'].'</option>';
}
}

Answer 2

Add attribute selected. Try this:
<select name="country">
<option value="kor">Korea</option>
<option value="rus">Russia</option>
<option selected="selected" value="jap">Japan</option>
</select>

Answer 3

Add selected for your option in your function populate_country(). (in the option you want to select as default only)

Answer 4

Add the seleteced attribute, e.g.:
<option value="test" selected="selected">Bla</option>
$defValue = 'Japan';
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
echo '<option value="' . $row['CountryName'] . '"';
if ($row['CountryName'] === $defValue) {
echo ' selected="selected"';
}
echo '>';
echo $row['CountryName'] . '</option>';
}

Answer 5

Just add attribute selected="selected" on the option value that you wish to be selected.
E.g.:
<option value="Japan" selected="selected">Japan</option>
To use this in your function, replace your function with this:
function populate_country($selected = NULL) {
if(connect_to_DB()==1) $result=FetchCountriesList();
//mysqli_data_seek($result,0);
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
echo '<option value="'.$row['CountryName'].'" '.($selected == $row['CountryName'] ? 'selected="selected"' : NULL).'>'.$row['CountryName'].'</option>';
}
}
You can then use this in your HTML:
<select autofocus="autofocus" name="SourceCountry" id="SourceCountry">
<?php populate_country("Japan");?>
</select>

Answer 6

<select>
<option> Red </option>
<option selected="selected"> blue </option>
<option> yellow </option>
</select>
Blue would be the selected in that dropdown.
Basically you need to loop throught your values and match if the value you want matches with the ones you have, and add the selected="selected" string to that option:
I would do something like this: (untested)
function populate_country($country){
$countries = array('algeria', 'japan', 'mexico', 'united kingdom' ..... );
foreach($countries as $country){
$selected = (strtolower($selected) == $country) ? ' selected="selected"' : null;
echo "<option$selected>".ucwords($country)."</option>\r\n";
}
}