Re: Dropdown Building Function

Hi, Jay, I see perhaps I *was* thinking too complex. However this is *just* a bit off: Jay Blanchard wrote:

[snip] 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

[/snip] It seems that you have over-complicated the issue, let me boil it down a little; $sql = "select answer from table "; if(!($result = mysql_query($sql, $connection))){ echo mysql_error() . "\n"; exit(); } echo "<select name=\"answers\">\n; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){ echo "<option name=\"". $row['answer'] . "\">"; echo $row['answer']; echo "</option>\n"; } echo "</select>\n"; Your out put will look like this; <select name="answers"> <option name="answer1">answer1</option> <option name="answer2">answer2</option> <option name="answer3">answer3</option> </select> Is this what you're after?

Very close to it, thank you! However this completes the gap: I am still not sure if my syntax is right: $sql = 'SELECT * FROM questions,answers WHERE answers.q_id=questions.q_id ORDER BY questions.q_cat,questions.q_id,answers.q_id'; if(!($result = mysql_query($sql, $connection))){

    echo mysql_error() . "\n";
    exit();

} /*each question has at least one answer, usually three to six *I need to give the select the name of $q_name *and dynamically loop through until all the question/answer *sets have their own dropdown */ echo "<select name=\'" . $q_name . "\'>"\n; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){ echo "<option name=\"". $row['a_id'] . "\""; echo "<?php if" . \$$q_name . " == " . $a_id . "echo \"selected \" ?>"\n; echo $row['$a_answer']; echo "</option>\n"; } echo "</select>\n"; Then hopefully my output would look like <select name="question_name"> <option <?php if $question_name == 1 echo "selected " ?> value="1">Answer One</option> <select name="question_name"> <option <?php if $question_name == 2 echo "selected " ?> value="2">Answer Two</option> <select name="question_name"> <option <?php if $question_name == 1 echo "selected " ?> value="3">Answer Two</option> </select> TIA!!