Load data from database & retain data between postbacks - php

Question

In PHP Project, I'm creating page a which retrieve the data from database on page load then allow the user to change data & Update. I have to use input text and option controls to display data. Editing form data may involve in few POST requests. To load data from database and retain data between POSTs I use this approach.
Load Data from Database
$oClass = new DataClass();
$oClass ->GetRecordById($_REQUEST['id']);
$dataName = $oClass ->Name;
$dataYear = $oClass ->Year;
INPUT TEXTs
<input type="text" name="txtName" value="<?php echo isset($_POST['txtName']) ? $_POST['txtName'] : $dataName ?>" >
OPTIONs
$arrYears = GetYears();
foreach ($arrYears as $year) {
if (isset($_POST['ddlYear'])) {
if ($_POST['ddlYear'] == $year) {
echo '<option value="' . $year . '" selected="selected">' . $year . '</option>';
} else {
echo '<option value="' . $year . '">' . $year . '</option>';
}
} else {
if ($dataYear == $year) {
echo '<option value="' . $year . '" selected="selected">' . $year . '</option>';
} else {
echo '<option value="' . $year . '">' . $year . '</option>';
}
}
}
Is there a better approach to retain data between posts than using like
if (isset($_POST['NAME']))
{$_POST['NAME']}
else
{$name}

Answer 1

Is there a reason why you need to retain the info? If a user submits the form it will update the info and therefore will need to be fetched again for the next person to come in and update or read.
Above though you assign $year = $oClass ->Year; but it's not referenced anywhere. the $year in the foreach loop is a local scope variable only for that foreach loop, after that loop finishes executing it disappears.
you can do stuff like this.
if (isset($_POST['txtName']))
{
$name = $_POST['txtName'];
}
else
{
$name = '';
}
<input type="text" name="txtName" value="<?php echo $name; ?>" />
Since the only difference between the options in the foreach loops are whether or not the selected attribute is applied you can shorten both of them to the following.
if (isset($_POST['ddlYear'])) {
echo '<option value="' . $year . ($_POST['ddlYear'] == $year) ? '" selected="selected"' : '' . '>' . $year . '</option>';
}
else {
echo '<option value="' . $year . ($movieyear == $year) ? '" selected="selected"' : '' . '>' . $year . '</option>';
}
Also to get a quicker answer please provide the simplest working use case, for example above example has $_POST variables that aren't defined anywhere and others like $movieyear also not defined.