Question

In my drop down list, each row has 3 fields from a db. I somehow need to pass these to another form where I will reference them in another SQL statement.

I’m not sure how to pass them. Any help would be really appreciated.

<form action='obtainaprice.php' method='POST'>
<?php

echo "<select name='makes' id='searchtext'>\n";

    $query1 = "SELECT DISTINCT make, type, model FROM device ORDER BY make, type, model";

    $result1 = mysql_query($query1)
       or die ("Couldn't execute query.");

    while ($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($result1))
    {
         $i=0;
             echo "<option value= \"" . $i . "\">" . $row1['make'] . " " . $row1['type'] . " " . $row1['model'] . "</option>";

             $i++;
    }

    echo "</select>\n";
?>
<input type="image" id="buttons" alt="Search" img src="images/button.png">
</form>

Answer 1

In this case you would make the value of the options the row’s id, which you need to select:

"SELECT DISTINCT id, make, type, model FROM device ORDER BY make, type, model"

assuming your primary index is called id…

<option value="<?php echo $row['id']; ?>">

Then on your next page you would run the next query based on the post value for makes…

 "SELECT id, make, type, model FROM device WHERE id = ".$_POST['makes']

of course, you need to sanitize this. You should switch to mysqli or PDO.

Side note – you should break out of php for writing html. It’s just cleaner. Run your query first so you don’t die in the middle of a select box. I don’t condone use of mysql_ functions but for the sake of example here is what I mean…

<?php
    $query1 = "SELECT DISTINCT id, make, type, model FROM device ORDER BY make, type, model";
    $result1 = mysql_query($query1)
       or die ("Couldn't execute query.");
?>
<form action='obtainaprice.php' method='POST'>
    <select name='makes' id='searchtext'>
    <?php while ($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($result1)): ?>
        <option value="<?php echo $row['id']; ?>"><?php echo $row1['make']; ?> <?php echo $row1['type']; ?> <?php echo $row1['model']; ?></option>
    <?php endwhile; ?>
    </select>
    <input type="image" id="buttons" alt="Search" img src="images/button.png">
</form>