Question

I would like to fill a select box with year starting from 1950 to the current year. How can I achieve this using PHP? I would not like to use JavaScript for this.

<select><?php
     $currentYear = date('Y');
        foreach (range(1950, $currentYear) as $value) {
            echo "< option>" . $value . "</option > ";

        }
?>
</select>

Answer 1

Use range to create an array containing all the required years, loop that array and print an option for each of the values.

You can use date('Y') to figure out the current year.

// use this to set an option as selected (ie you are pulling existing values out of the database)
$already_selected_value = 1984;
$earliest_year = 1950;

print '<select name="some_field">';
foreach (range(date('Y'), $earliest_year) as $x) {
    print '<option value="'.$x.'"'.($x === $already_selected_value ? ' selected="selected"' : '').'>'.$x.'</option>';
}
print '</select>';

Try it here: http://codepad.viper-7.com/Pw3U4O

Documentation

• foreach – http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.foreach.php
• range – http://php.net/manual/en/function.range.php
• date – http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php