Prepare drop down list and use multiple times - php

Question

I've got a database of regions for sale and I'm displaying it in a table for admins to edit the cost, whether it's for sale and who's selling it (seller). For the seller I've got a drop down list with an first option as the current owner for ease of use and then under that I just want it to list the rest of the possible users that could be sellers.
Thing is, there's a good 200 regions and I don't want to loop through every user for each region to display them in a list. Is there a way I can prepare the many 's rather than loop every time. Something like preparing the list as a string then inserting it as HTML? Wouldn't know how to do it that way if possibe.
Thanks in advance.[

Answer 1

let's say you make your list this way:
$str = "<select>";
$result = mysql_query("select * from sellers");
while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
$str.= '<option value="'.$row['id'].'">'.$row['name'].'</option>';
}
$str.="";
And you just output that everywhere you want the list to appear.
Also, you don't have to put the one you want selected by default at the top, you can also add the word 'selected' to the option tag like so:
<option value='1' selected>John Doe</option>

Answer 2

If I understand the question correctly. You need to create an array of option tags.
$Name = array();
$q = "SELECT name FROM users";
$r = mysqli_query ($dbc, $q) or die("Error: ".mysqli_error($dbc));
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($r)){
$Name[] = "<option value='$row[\"name\"]'>$row[\"name\"]</option>";
}
Then anytime you need that you just loop through array like so:
<select id='thisselect' name='thisselect'>
<?php
foreach($Name as $key =>$line){
echo "$line";
}
?>
</select>

Answer 3

All the answers are good but I suggest you to separate the logic from the content itself, instead of doing all that with concatenated strings, you should do it like this:
<select id="region" name="region">
<?php foreach($regions as $key => $region) ?>
<option value="<?php echo $key ?>"><?php echo $region ?></option>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</select>