Question

My question extends on the answer on this post and I couldn’t find what I’m looking for posted otherwise.

How do I auto select (checked) options in a checkbox list when the options are being pulled from a mySQL table (dynamic)?

Here’s what I have so far:

Pulling the committees (comms) from the table:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($comm)){
    foreach ($row as $v){
        $comms[] = $v;
        }
}

outputting pretty HTML with tidy PHP (the part I need help with):

    foreach ($comms as $comm){
       ?????????
    }

How can I output something like?:

<input type="checkbox" name="committee" value="blue" checked="checked" />blue<br />
<input type="checkbox" name="committee" value="green"  />green<br />
<input type="checkbox" name="committee" value="orange"  />orange<br />
<input type="checkbox" name="committee" value="purple" checked="checked" />purple<br />

Answer 1

Assuming your colors are stored in an array and your data comes back as an array (likely not the case if you’re using mysql_* functions), you can print out each checkbox, then compare its value to see if it’s in the list of “checked” colors:

<?php
$colors = array('blue', 'green', 'orange', 'purple');

$data = array('blue', 'purple');//array pulled from database.

foreach($colors as $color): ?>
    <input type="checkbox" name="committee" value="<?= $color ?>" <?= in_array($color, $data) ? 'checked="checked" ' : '' ?>/><br />
<?php endforeach; ?>

By the way, you should stop using mysql_* functions. They’re being deprecated. Instead use PDO (supported as of PHP 5.1) or mysqli (supported as of PHP 4.1). If you’re not sure which one to use, read this article.