Question

I’m working on a forum software right now, and I’m doing the administration panel. I have a part with a dropdown box of all the current forums. It works, but it doesn’t show the first forum in the table.

This is my code

$select_forums = "SELECT id,name FROM forums";
$run_select_forums = mysql_query("$select_forums");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($run_select_forums, MYSQL_ASSOC);

<form action='index.php' method='post'>
<select>
<?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($run_select_forums, MYSQL_ASSOC)) { ?>
<option value="<?php echo $row["id"] ?>" name="selected"><?php echo $row["name"] ?>      
</option>
<?php } ?>
</select><br/>
<input type='submit' name='submitdelete' value='Delete' />
</form>

Also I wondered how I can retrieve what item was selected from the list?

Answer 1

It isn’t displaying the first one because you’re calling mysql_fetch_array() once before your while loop begins:

$select_forums = "SELECT id,name FROM forums";
$run_select_forums = mysql_query("$select_forums");
// Don't call mysql_fetch_array() here...
$row = mysql_fetch_array($run_select_forums, MYSQL_ASSOC);

Additionally, you should wrap these values in htmlentities() in the attributes and htmlspecialchars() outside the attributes to escape them properly as HTML attributes (as well as against XSS attacks)

<option value="<?php echo htmlentities($row["id"], ENT_QUOTES) ?>" name="selected"><?php echo htmlspecialchars($row["name"]) ?>      
</option>

I understand your $row['id] is likely an integer not needing escaping, but it is a good habit to get into.