Question

I have result that I want to display as a drop down menu. The query selects id and name from a table.

        $usersQuery = "SELECT id, name
        FROM users";
        $usersResult = mysqli_query ($dbc, $usersQuery);

I want to use this result as a list in a drop down menu. This is what i have so far.

      <select id="dropdown" name="dropdown">
        <option value="select" selected="selected">Select</option>
       <?php
        while ($usersRow = mysqli_fetch_array($usersResult, MYSQLI_ASSOC)){
          foreach ($usersRow as $value){
            echo "<option value=\"$value\"";
            echo ">$value</option>\n";
          }
        }
        ?>
      </select>

this would work fine if I just wanted to display name as both the value and the display to the user. But what I want to do is use the selected id as “value” for the select option and I want to show the name selected to the user. I have tried this but it does not work.

  <select id="dropdown" name="dropdown">
    <option value="select" selected="selected">Select</option>
   <?php
    while ($usersRow = mysqli_fetch_array($usersResult, MYSQLI_ASSOC)){
      foreach ($usersRow as $id=>$name){
        echo "<option value=\"$id\"";
        echo ">$name</option>\n";
      }
    }
    ?>
  </select>

Any help would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

mysqli_fetch_array() is a function which converts your query results into an array. which means you can display your values like you would with a normal array value.

<select id="dropdown" name="dropdown">
    <option value="select" selected="selected">Select</option>
   <?php
    while ($usersRow = mysqli_fetch_array($usersResult, MYSQLI_ASSOC)){


        echo "<option value=\"".$usersRow['id']."\"";
        echo ">".$usersRow['name']."</option>\n";

    }
    ?>
  </select>