Question

Can some one tell me why the following doesn’t populate the dropdown with the the values from the dist_itnry column of my database?

<?php 
$distUsr = $_SESSION['Distributor_user'];
$con=mysql_connect('localhost','root') or die ("Server connection failure!");
$db=mysql_select_db('regional_data',$con) or die ("Couldn't connect the database");
$SQL1="SELECT dist_itnry, route FROM sr_itinerary";
$run1=mysql_query($SQL1,$con) or die ("SQL Error");
$nor1=mysql_num_rows($run1);

while($rec=mysql_fetch_array($run1))
{
    while ($rec = $distUsr)
    {
        echo "<option id='options'>$rec<br></option>";
    }
}
?>

Answer 1

You were overwriting $rec. Also, please take a look at the other changes I made like including the <select> tag and a more proper usage of the <option> tag. You can specify a different value for the <option> tag. Example: <option value="123">Something</option> – this means “123” will be the value submitted when the form is submitted. But “Something” will be displayed in the form.

The corrected code is listed below:

<?php 
$distUsr = $_SESSION['Distributor_user'];
$con=mysql_connect('localhost','root') or die ("Server connection failure!");
$db=mysql_select_db('regional_data',$con) or die ("Couldn't connect the database");
$SQL1="SELECT dist_itnry, route FROM sr_itinerary";
$run1=mysql_query($SQL1,$con) or die ("SQL Error");
$nor1=mysql_num_rows($run1);
echo '<select name="dropdown">';
while($rec=mysql_fetch_array($run1))
{
    $value = $rec['dist_itnry'];
    echo "<option value=\"$value\">$value</option>";
}
echo '</select>';
?>