Question

Hi all and thanks for your time.

I’m using the following query to get information from my database:

$sql = "SELECT amember_countries.country, amember_countries.title, gold_profile.username, gold_profile.country AS userCountry 
        FROM amember_countries 
        LEFT JOIN gold_profile
        ON amember_countries.country = gold_profile.country

        ORDER BY amember_countries.title ASC
        ";

$rs = mysql_query($sql);

$selected = "";

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rs))
{
    if ($row['userCountry'] == $row['country'] && $row['username'] == $username){
    $selected = "selected"; 
    }else{
    $selected = "";

    }
    echo "<option ".$selected." value=\"".$row['country']."\">".$row['title']."\n "; 
}

It works fine, but the problem I’m facing is if 3 people are from the Netherlands, the select box will show 3 times Netherlands. Same thing for the rest of the countries.

So for example:

user 1 is from The Netherlands
user 3 is from The Netherlands
user 6 is from The Netherlands

When clicking on the select box it shows:

Belgium
Canada
Luxemburg
Netherlands
Netherlands
Netherlands

The same thing is happening to the other countries.

Any idea how to solve this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Could potential solutions to this:

Code Side

You could do something like this:

$a = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rs))
{
    if ($row['userCountry'] == $row['country'] && $row['username'] == $username){
    $selected = "selected"; 
    }else{
    $selected = "";

    }
    if(!in_array($row['country'], $a))
    {
       echo "<option ".$selected." value=\"".$row['country']."\">".$row['title']."\n "; 
       array_push($a, $row['country']);
    }
}

Database

You could also tailor your database query to simply select the countries:

SELECT * FROM FROM amember_countries GROUP BY amember_countries.country

…Or something to that effect.

I would personally suggest the database solution as that would be the “correct” solution (databases are made to solve this kind of problem).