Question

I am not quite getting the code below right but I have a drop down menu below where I want it to display these values below:

1
1/2
2
2/3
3
3/4
4
4/5

...

10

Now I also want to be able to keep the option selected after a submit so I have tried this code below but the problem is that it is only display values 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5... etc.

foreach ($years as $year) {
    if ($validSubmission && $year == $getduration) {
         if ($year != $max_year) {
         $nextYear = $year + 1;
      $durationHTML .= "<option value='" . $year . "' selected='selected'>$year/$nextYear</option>".PHP_EOL;      
     }else{
    $durationHTML .= "<option value='" . $year . "' selected='selected'>$year</option>".PHP_EOL;  
}
}else{
         if ($year != $max_year) {
         $nextYear = $year + 1;
    $durationHTML .= "<option value='" . $year . "'>$year/$nextYear</option>".PHP_EOL;
}else{
    $durationHTML .= "<option value='" . $year . "'>$year</option>" . PHP_EOL;
     }
}
}

The origanl code was this below where it displays the correct options but did not perform the $validSubmission variable so that it does not keep the option selected after submitting a page:

foreach ($years as $year) {
    $durationHTML .= "<option>$year</option>".PHP_EOL;  
    if ($year != $max_year) {
         $nextYear = $year + 1;
         $durationHTML .= "<option>$year/$nextYear</option>".PHP_EOL;              
    }
}
$durationHTML .= '</select>';

The code below does keep the option displayed after submit but does not display the values with / in between the values:

 foreach ($years as $year) {
        if ($validSubmission && $year == $getduration) {
            $durationHTML .= "<option value='" . $year . "' selected='selected'>$year</option>" . PHP_EOL;
        } else {
            $durationHTML .= "<option value='" . $year . "'>$year</option>" . PHP_EOL;
        }
    }

But trying to combine both the code has not worked and that is the problem I am having

Answer 1

Try this modified/simplified code. By using a ternary comparison – $var = condition ? if_true : if_false – to set the selected='selected' attribute, you can minimize the code (from ~17 lines to ~9).

foreach ($years as $year) {

    //Gets the single years - 1,2,3...
    $sel =($validSubmission && $year == $getduration)? " selected='selected'": "";
    $durationHTML .= "<option value='$year'$sel>$year</option>".PHP_EOL;

    //Gets the double years - 1/2,2/3,3/4...
    if ($year != $max_year) {
    $nextYear = $year + 1;
    $sel =($validSubmission && ($year.'/'.$nextYear) == $getduration)? " selected='selected'": "";
    $durationHTML .= "<option value='$year/$nextYear'$sel>$year/$nextYear</option>".PHP_EOL;  
    }
}