functions/methods and what they should return

Hi people. I'm working on a large application right now (complete ecom store) and I'd like to get some feedback on something. Each product that is in the database can have at least one attribute to it (i.e. color, size, etc.). Right now I've got a method in my Products class called ShowAttributes($id). This method, based on the ID passed to it, will query the db and ultimately return a string that makes up the drop down box for a form. Am I better off doing this sort of thing in a function or having the function only return the records I need and let the calling page handle the display of the records? What do you think about this? Thanks, Chris.