Question

I’m trying to populate a form SELECT with OPTIONS from a table in my database. It should display each year once.

eg. If the date fields in the database are 02-09-2010, 10-14-2010, 08-09-2011 :

The dropdown should show:
2010
2011

Instead, it shows:
2010
2010
2011

My code:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT date FROM user_history");

        $yearoptions = "";

        while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
            $date = $row['date'];
            $yeararray = explode("-", $date);
            $year = array_unique($yeararray);
            $yearoptions .= '<option value="' . $year[2] . '">'
           . $year[2] . '</option>';

Can anyone see what I’m doing wrong and offer a suggestion?

Answer 1

$result = mysql_query("SELECT distinct year(date) as years FROM user_history ORDER BY 1 ASC");

<?php while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { ?>
  <option value="<?php echo $row['years'];"><?php echo $row['years']; ?></option>
<?php endwhile; ?>