Dynamic PHP Dropdown Menu for Countries - php

Question

Okay so I have a table called Countries and it looks like this:
---------------------------
|Country | Code |
---------------------------
|Afganastan | AF |
|ÅLAND ISLANDS| AX |
| etc. | etc. |
---------------------------
The thing that I want to do is create a dynamic menu in which the user chooses a country and that itself gets stored as a value that I can call after the user hits submit.
I did try something here but I'm not sure what its doing because I am still new to PHP and HTML to the point where I just type things in to see what would happen.
Anyways I am really stuck and I tried using google and the search feature in this site and nothing I found worked for me...
The code I tried is this:
<select>
<?php
$result = mysql_query('SELECT Country FROM Countries');
echo '<select name="country">';
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo '<option value="'.$row['id'].'">'.$row['name'].'</option>';
}
echo '</select>';
?>
</select>
The result is supposed to look like a dropdown menu with the list of countries from the database in it. But this doesn't work and just shows this in the drop down:
.$row['name']
Which is nothing close to what I want because that's not even a country. when I remove that part of the code, then there is no option for the user to choose, the menu is empty.
EDIT
My code so far that still doesn't work:
<select name = 'country'>
<?php
include ("account.php");
include ("connect.php");
$result = mysql_query('SELECT Code , Country FROM Countries');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{?>
<option value="<?php echo $row['Code']?>"><?php echo $row['Country']?></option>
<?php}
?>
</select>
The include ("account.php"); and include ("connect.php"); lines allow me to connect to my database.

Answer 1

you code should be something like this
$host = "localhost";
$user = "root";
$pass = "yourpassword";
$db = "databasename";
// This part sets up the connection to the
// database (so you don't need to reopen the connection
// again on the same page).
$ms = #mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass);
if ( !$ms )
{
echo "Error connecting to database.\n";
}
// Then you need to make sure the database you want
// is selected.
#mysql_select_db($db);
<form method = "POST" action = "abc.php">
<select name = 'country'>
<?php
$result = mysql_query('SELECT id , name FROM Countries');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{?>
<option value="<?php echo $row['id']?>"><?php echo $row['name']?></option>
<?php}
?>
<input type = "submit" value = "Submit">
</form>
Now in php use this
echo '<pre>';
print_r($_POST);
And you will see what user selected. Check your settings there might be some problem.

Answer 2

Your single and double quotes are messing you up:
echo '<option value="'.$row['id'].'">'.$row['name'].'</option>';
should be:
echo "<option value=\"" . $row['id'] . "\">" . $row['name'] . "</option>";
You can use a single quote around your script but when you jump out of it to do the $row['id'] and $row['name'] you are running into issues because it thinks you are jumping back into your quoted code... Either use my example above, starting/ending with double-quotes and escaping all double-quotes inside that need to display, or escape your single quotes in the $row[\'id\'] and $row[\'name\']
Thant should help you out.

Answer 3

Try this code
<?php
$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM Countries');
?>
<select name="country">
<?php
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
?>
<option value="<?php echo $row['id']; ?>"><?php echo $row['name']; ?></option>
<?php
}
?>
</select>

Answer 4

Firstly your table doesn't have a column id. Try changing your query like
SELECT Country, Code FROM Countries
Then the code and the html should be like this
<?php
$host = "localhost";
$user = "user"; //username
$pass = "pass"; //password
$db = "db"; //database
$con = #mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass);
if ( !$con )
{
echo "Error connecting to database.\n";
}
#mysql_select_db($db);
?>
<select name="country">
<option value="0" selected="selected">Choose..</option>
<?php
//echo '<select name = \'country\'>';
$result = mysql_query('SELECT Country, Code FROM Countries');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo '<option value="'.$row['Code'].'">'.$row['Country'].'</option>';
}
?>
</select>

Answer 5

<select>
<?php
$result = mysql_query('SELECT Country FROM Countries');
echo '<select name="country">';
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result)
for ($i=0; $i<count($row ); $i++)
{
echo '<option value="'.$row[$i]['id'].'">'.$row[$i]['name'].'</option>';
}
echo '</select>';
?>
next page use print_r($_POST);
or var_dump($_REQUEST);

Answer 6

If you are using mysql_fetch_array you can use either the field names or their selected index to read them from the fetched row. You can also use either the sprintf or printf functions to merge content into a string to help keep the HTML fragment clean of the quotes needed to merge in values otherwise.
$result = mysql_query('SELECT Country, Code FROM Countries');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
printf('<option value="%1$s">%2$s</option>',
$row['Code'], $row['Country']);
}

Answer 7

Your SQL statement selected only 'Country' from the 'Countries' table; as a result, it's impossible for you to use $row['id'] and $row['name'].
Use this instead:
echo '<select name="country">';
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo '<option value="'.$row['Code'].'">'.$row['Country'].'</option>';
}
echo '</select>';
?>
That should solve your problem.

Answer 8

I figured out the problem I was having. The first being that there was an extra select tag in the page and the second that the file was saved as a html page instead of a php file. Thank you to everyone that helped me figure this out!

Answer 9

Try my code, I'm using this and it really works... just change the values...
<?php
include ('connect.php');
$sql = "SELECT * FROM casestatusfile";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
echo "<select name = 'txtCaseStatus'/>";
echo "<option value = ''>--- Select ---</option>";
$casestatus = $_POST['txtCaseStatus'];
$selected = 'selected = "selected" ';
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo "<option " .($row['CASESTATUSCODE'] == $casestatus? $selected:''). "value='". $row['CASESTATUSCODE'] ."'>" . $row['CASESTATUS'] ."</option>";
}
echo "</select>";
?>
I'm sure that is working because that is the one that i'm using....