Question

I have an add form that allows me to add the specific field into the database and one of my options is a dropdown menu so that I can set the form type:

I now in the process of creating the edit page and I have called the other values as $field->name etc but how would I call $field->type to set the specific value for the dropdown menu?

My Add view is:

<label for="edit_fields_type">Type: </label>
<select name="edit_fields_type" id="edit_fields_type">
    <option value="">Please Select</option>
    <option value="input" <?php echo set_select('edit_fields_type','input', ( !empty($fieldType) && $fieldType == "input" ? TRUE : FALSE )); ?>>Input</option>
    <option value="textarea" <?php echo set_select('edit_fields_type','textarea', ( !empty($fieldType) && $fieldType == "textarea" ? TRUE : FALSE )); ?>>Text Area</option>
    <option value="radiobutton" <?php echo set_select('edit_fields_type','radiobutton', ( !empty($fieldType) && $fieldType == "radiobutton" ? TRUE : FALSE )); ?>>Radio Button</option>
    <option value="checkbox" <?php echo set_select('edit_fields_type','checkbox', ( !empty($data) && $data == "checkbox" ? TRUE : FALSE )); ?>>Check Box</option>
</select>

Answer 1

So what you want from the form helper is the third parameter of form_dropdown() which allows you to specify the selected item. Possibly:

$this->load->helper('form');
$options = array('input' => 'Input','textarea' => 'Text Area','radiobutton' => 'Radio Button','checkbox' => 'Checkbox',);
echo form_dropdown('edit_fields_type', $options, $field->type);

Where $field->type is wherever you have the selected value in your model.