Question

I have a basic mysqli code below where it performs a query to select Course number and Course Name from database and display it in a drop down menu.

    $sql = "SELECT CourseId, CourseNo, CourseName FROM Course ORDER BY CourseId"; 

    $sqlstmt=$mysqli->prepare($sql);

    $sqlstmt->execute(); 

    $sqlstmt->bind_result($dbCourseId, $dbCourseNo, $dbCourseName);

    $courses = array(); // easier if you don't use generic names for data 

    $courseHTML = "";  
    $courseHTML .= '<select name="courses" id="coursesDrop" onchange="getModules();">'.PHP_EOL; 
    $courseHTML .= '<option value="">Please Select</option>'.PHP_EOL;  

    $outputcourse = ""; 
    while($sqlstmt->fetch()) 
    { 
    $course = $dbCourseId;
    $courseno = $dbCourseNo;
    $coursename = $dbCourseName; 
    $courseHTML .= "<option value='".$course."'>" . $courseno . " - " . $coursename . "</option>".PHP_EOL;  

    $outputcourse .= "<p><strong>Course:</strong> " . $courseno .  " - "  . $coursename . "</p>";

    } 

    $courseHTML .= '</select>';  

    ?>

    <form action="<?php echo htmlentities($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']); ?>" method="post" onsubmit="return validation();">
<table>
<tr>
<th>Course: <?php echo $courseHTML; ?></th>
</tr>
</table>
<p><input id="moduleSubmit" type="submit" value="Submit Course and Module" name="moduleSubmit" /></p>
</form>

    <?php

    if (isset($_POST['moduleSubmit'])) {

    $assessmentform = "<div id='lt-container'>
<form action='".htmlentities($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])."' method='post' id='assessmentForm'>
{$outputcourse}
</form>
</div>";

echo $assessmentform;

...

?>

Now lets say the drop down menu contains these courses below:

INFO101 - Information Communication Technology
INFO102 - Computing

For some strange reason no matter which course I choose from the drop down menu, when I click on the the submit button, the echo it is suppose to output underneath the drop down menu always outputs the Course Number and Course Name INFO102 - Computing. This is even though I selected the other option INFO101 - Information Communication Technology Why is this happening?

Answer 1

In your while loop, you are reinitializing $outputcourse on each iteration, rather than accumulating it into a long string. It therefore would only ever show the last item fetched in your loop.

// Initialize $outputcourse outside the loop:
$outputcourse = "";
while($sqlstmt->fetch()) 
{ 
    $course = $dbCourseId;
    $courseno = $dbCourseNo;
    $coursename = $dbCourseName; 
    $courseHTML .= "<option value='".$course."'>" . $courseno . " - " . $coursename . "</option>".PHP_EOL;  

    // Match the course in $_POST with the current fetch iteration and load $outputcourse
    if (isset($_POST['courses']) && $_POST['courses'] == $course)) {
      $outputcourse = "<p><strong>Course:</strong> " . $courseno .  " - "  . $coursename . "</p>";
    }
}

Now, only the selected course will be loaded into $outputcourse. Hopefully you have included some other inputs in your $assessmentform which are not shown above, because as it is now you have just wrapped a <p> inside a <form> with no associated inputs.