Question

I have a select menu that displays countries. It looks at the DB and judging by the value in the db shows the option as selected. Is there a simpler way off doing this than:

if ($country == 'AG') {echo '<option value="AG" selected="selected">Antigua</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="AG">Antigua</option>';};

if ($country == 'AR') {echo '<option value="AR" selected="selected">Argentina</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="AR">Argentina</option>';};

if ($country == 'AM') {echo '<option value="AM" selected="selected">Armenia</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="AM">Armenia</option>';};

if ($country == 'AW') {echo '<option value="AW" selected="selected">Aruba</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="AW">Aruba</option>';};

if ($country == 'AU') {echo '<option value="AU" selected="selected">Australia</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="AU">Australia</option >';};

if ($country == 'AT') {echo '<option value="AT" selected="selected">Austria</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="AT">Austria</option>';};

if ($country == 'AZ') {echo '<option value="AZ" selected="selected">Azerbaijan</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="AZ">Azerbaijan</option>';};

if ($country == 'BS') {echo '<option value="BS" selected="selected">Bahamas</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="BS">Bahamas</option>';};

if ($country == 'BH') {echo '<option value="BH" selected="selected">Bahrain</option>';} 
else {echo '<option value="BH">Bahrain</option>';};

There are a lot of countries and doing this would be madness wouldn’t it????

Answer 1

Whenever you have a lot of code, that do practically the same it’s a sign to use a loop or a function instead of rewriting thousands lines of code.

As Michael B. noticed on of the easies way is to use an array and a simple loop to display this list and mark correct element as selected.

$countries = array(
     'us' => 'United States of America',
     'de' => 'Germany',
     'pl' => 'Poland',
     'fr' => 'France',
     ...
);

foreach ($countires as $code => $name) {
    echo '<option value="' . $code . '" ' . ($country == $code ? 'selected="selected"' : null) . '>' . $name . '</option>';
}