It doesn’t matter if there is one word or multiple words. All of the words in the selected element get passed as a variable value. In the code above, that variable would be read like this:

if (isset($_POST['categoryID'])) $categoryID = $_POST['categoryID']; else $categoryID = 0;

You could substitute the category name for the category ID in the code and it should assign it to $categoryID on the page that processes the form data.

I am using php to populate the list and calling another php file to process the search…which of course is coming up blank due to no matches!
Looking forward to some input here. Thanks!

If I understand you correctly, you want to substitute the word Any whenever a field is empty. You will still need an ID for a unique identifier, but if the text field is empty, you can test it and substitute the word Any. In the case of the code sample above, you could do something like this for the code within the WHILE loop.

if(empty($row['category_name'])) $catName = "Any"; else $catName = $row['category_name'];
echo "<option value=\"".$row['category_id']."\">".$catName."</option>\n";

You may end up with multiple instances where the choice is ‘Any’.

echo”Any”;

wasnt able to send an empty / null value..

sorry if i am not been able to put it perfectly, as am not an PHP expert, just trying to correct a given code..

Thanks
Abhay

<?php
$sql = "SELECT ID_day, day FROM day ".
"ORDER BY ID_day";

$rs = mysql_query($sql);

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rs))
{
echo '’.$row['day'].”\n “;

}
?>

I want the page to also pass the ID_date field to the one selected.

Thanks

Steve

but what if you have multiple entries with the same category? it will show you then the category to select for each individual one. any possibilities to group them togehter?

in my case im doing a sort by date. so i have a timestamp in the database which is like : 2011-08-23 08:45:01 which using substr will show me then the date only. but if there where 10 entries with that date i got like 10 times the same option.

Would like to ask for your help. Im currently using a multiple select box and i’m already done with the inserting part but i’m having problems on populating the data the was inserted

MySQL Data:
A, B, C, D

how can i use the data to be inserted to the edit multiple select box?

Thanks Guys!

I don’t know if any of your code got stripped out. WordPress has a tendency to do that. I don’t see the HTML option code in the sample code that you submitted.

If you want to retrieve the selected value from the select box used in ther example, use the following PHP code on the page that the form gets submitted to. This will retrieve the selected value from categoryID and plug it into a variable named $categoryID. This assumes that you are using the POST method.

if (isset($_POST['categoryID'])) $categoryID = $_POST['categoryID'];

If you are trying to retain the selected value from the drop-down and display that if the form fails the error checking, then you need to change the code for line with the the option tag. Split the line with the option code into three lines.

echo “<option value=\”".$row['category_id'].”\”";
if ($categoryID == $row['category_id']) echo ” selected=\”selected\”";
echo “>”.$row['category_name'].”</option>\n “;

This compares the value assigned to $categoryID when you did the error checking and compares it to the current option value. If they match, it inserts the selected=”selected” attribute, which displays the last selection made with the drop-down box.