Creating a select dropdown from a .txt? - php

Question

I've a select menu hardcoded in a wordpress (php) theme, but the manager requires to edit those frequently. Is it possible to populate the select dropdown options from a text file import? So he just has to edit the text file and the menu options would change.
The current menu looks like this:
<select name="location" id="sort-location" class="sort-dropdown">
<option value="" selected="selected">LOCATION:</option>
<option value="" disabled="">--------------</option>
<option value="hongkong">Hong Kong</option>
<option value="taiwan">Taiwan</option>
<option value="mainland_china">Mainland China</option>
<option value="" disabled="">--------------</option>
<option value="">SHOW ALL</option>
</select>

Answer 1

Sure -- make yourself a small loop that runs through the lines in the format you choose.
<?php
$select = file_get_contents('select.txt');
$lines = explode("\n", $select);
foreach ($lines as $line) {
// let's say our format is like this:
// value|name|selected|disabled
// or:
// -
// for separator
if ($line == '-') {
echo '<option disabled="disabled">----------</option>';
} else {
list($value, $name, $selected, $disabled) = explode("|",$line);
echo '<option value="'.$value.'"',
$selected?' selected="selected"':'',
$disabled?' disabled="disabled"':'',
'>'.$name.'</option>';
}
}
?>

Answer 2

Sure, just fetch the text file into an array using file() and create the select out of it. A very simple implementation: menu.txt:
hongkong Hong Kong
taiwan Taiwan
mainland_china Mainland China
Note the tabs between value and label.
Then in PHP:
$menu_items = file("menu.txt");
foreach ($menu_items as $menu_item)
{
// Explode
$menu_item_exploded = explode("\t", $menu_item);
$option_value = htmlspecialchars(trim($menu_item_exploded[0]));
$option_label = htmlspecialchars(trim($menu_item_exploded[1]));
echo "<option value='$option_value'>$option_label</option>";
}
As far as I can see, you have the following left to solve:
How to pre-set a predefined value (You need to echo selected in the right item)
How to deal with the user editing out a value from the text file that was pre-set in your select.
Error handling if the file is not existent or not accessible
Error handling if the user screws up the line breaks, or something similar - maybe count the lines, and/or detect whether there are tabs inside the file