Question

I’ve a select menu hardcoded in a wordpress (php) theme, but the manager requires to edit those frequently. Is it possible to populate the select dropdown options from a text file import? So he just has to edit the text file and the menu options would change.

The current menu looks like this:

<select name="location" id="sort-location" class="sort-dropdown"> 
            <option value="" selected="selected">LOCATION:</option> 
            <option value="" disabled="">--------------</option> 
            <option value="hongkong">Hong Kong</option> 
            <option value="taiwan">Taiwan</option> 
            <option value="mainland_china">Mainland China</option> 
            <option value="" disabled="">--------------</option> 
            <option value="">SHOW ALL</option> 
        </select>

Answer 1

Sure — make yourself a small loop that runs through the lines in the format you choose.

<?php
$select = file_get_contents('select.txt');
$lines = explode("\n", $select);
foreach ($lines as $line) {
    // let's say our format is like this:
    // value|name|selected|disabled
    // or:
    // -
    // for separator
    if ($line == '-') {
        echo '<option disabled="disabled">----------</option>';
    } else {
        list($value, $name, $selected, $disabled) = explode("|",$line);
        echo '<option value="'.$value.'"',
        $selected?' selected="selected"':'',
        $disabled?' disabled="disabled"':'',
        '>'.$name.'</option>';
    }
}
?>