Re: Dropdown Building Function

Hi, can anyone even point me in a *direction*? I suppose this is the most complex thing I've ever tried to do and I have been at it for tens of hours and am still completely baffled. Jack Jackson wrote:

Hi, because that last topic on multipage forms was so exciting, I decided to database the questions as well. I wonder if anyone can help me with a function to pull rows into dropdown boxes. It's a 1:n relationship between questions and answers, and I have a table of questions q_id q_name q_text q_style //dropdown, radio, checkboxes q_cat //question category and a table full of answers a_id q_id a_answer When I do

    $fields = 'SELECT *';
    $from = 'FROM questions,answers';
    $sort = "ORDER BY questions.q_cat";
    $where = "WHERE answers.q_id=questions.q_id";

// construct the sql query: $sql = "$fields $from $where $sort"; // Run SQL query 1 if (!($result = mysql_query($sql))) { echo "Could not connect to the database ($sql)" . mysql_error(); } while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {

    
I need to loop through the results and make a dropdown list from them, taking the question name as the select name, and then making each answer id and answer text the makings of an option ros.

Based on a problem a while ago which was similar but different, someone here actually made me a function *similar* to what I need to do now, This one acts different and I just cannot adapt the old one, because I still get confused at this level. I think it wants to be something like (and note that part of the return is the code to react to error checking results): $dropdown[] = '<option <?php if (' . $q_name . ' == "' . $a_id . '") echo "selected "; ?> value=\'' . $a_id . '\'>' . $a_answer . '</option>';

    etc for all $a_answer(s)...
    and then
    return '<?php if (sizeof($message[\'' . $q_name . '\'])){ echo "<div class='error'>"; } ?>
    <div class=\'row\'>
    <select class=\'answer\' name=\'' . $q_name . '\'>
    <option value=\'\'>Select from this list</option>'
             join('',$dropdown)
             . '</select></div>'
     . '<?php if (sizeof($message[\''. $q_name '\'])){ echo "</div><!--/error-->"; } ?>';
    

Can anyone point me at the right direction? Thanks!! JJ