Question

I have created and html form which have a drop down list.

This drop down list is populated from database.

<select name="classes">
<?php
foreach() {
?>
<option value="<?php echo $id ?>"><?php echo $name ?></option>
<?php
}
?>
</select>

Now I want to get the $id and $name both. How will I do this?

I have tried this

echo $_POST['classes'];

But it only displays the $id of the select item. And I want $id and $name both.

Answer 1

You can’t. One possibility would be placing both infos inside the value attribute, and then separating them back again with php (by using a delimiter):

<option value="<?php echo $id.'|'.$name; ?>"><?php echo $name ?></option>

In PHP:

$datas = explode('|',$_POST['classes']);
$id = $datas[0];
$name = $datas[1];

But that’s not how the system is meant to be. Usually the $name would be used only as a “friendly” info for the user, cause the value might sometimes just be an INT and user won’t understand what that int refers to, so we give him a word description in order to choose an option: but what you would only care of is that value indeed, which you can always use to get again the description that comes along with it (by a search to the database, for ex.)