Question

Normally I would do something like this:

<select name="myselect">
  <option value="opt1" <?=($_POST['myselect']=="opt1"?"SELECTED":"")?>>Option 1</option>
  <option value="opt2" <?=($_POST['myselect']=="opt2"?"SELECTED":"")?>>Option 2</option>
</select>

However this time I’ve taken a list of all the countries in a select from this website: http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/376

To go through each of those and put in the validation will be insane.

There is a php solution in the comments but it seems somewhat inelegant.

Is there an alternative way to do this or something similar? I would prefer not to use javascript, and I’m not sure I want to rely on the browser caching.

Thanks

Answer 1

// I'm using integers as key values in this example. Modify as needed.    
$countries = array(
  1 => 'Some Country',
  // etc...
);

// Sanitize as needed, casting to integer in my example
$selectedCountryCode = isset( $_POST['myselect'] ) ? (int) $_POST['myselect'] : null;

$select = '<select name="myselect">';
foreach( $countries as $countryCode => $countryName )
{
    $selected = $selectedCountryCode == $countryCode ? ' selected="selected"' : '';
    $select .= '<option value="' . $countryCode .'"' . $selected . '>' . $countryName . '</option>';
}
$select .= '</select>';

echo $select;