Using Php To Populate A Drop Down List Box From
September 3rd, 2009 | 
Author: Using Php To Populate A Drop Down List Box From A Mysql Database Table
Quite often when you are developing web sites or applications it is necessary to create a drop down list box that contains entries from a database table. You can of course hard code theitems in the drop down list box but this isn’t really very elegant and can create problems if the entries in the database table change at a later date. It is much better to extract the entries from the database table directly and then populate the drop down list box using those entries.
Creating the database table
The following script databasetable.sql could typically be used to create a database table called ‘years’ that contains for example a list of years. These will be the entries that appear in the drop down list box.
databasetable.sql
create table years
yearID integer auto_increment
year varchar30
primary key yearID
;
insert into years yearID year values ’1′ ’20072008′;
insert into years yearID year values ’2′ ’20082009′;
insert into years yearID year values ’3′ ’20092010′;
insert into years yearID year values ’4′ ’20102011′;
insert into years yearID year values ’5′ ’20112012′;
insert into years yearID year values ’6′ ’20122013′;
The following PHP script populatelist.php which would form part of a form will extract all the entries from the ‘years’ database table and use them to populate the drop down list box.
populatelist.php
If the entries in the database table change at some stage in the future those changes will be automatically reflected in the drop down list box in the form.
About the writer: John Dixon is a web developer working through his own company John Dixon Technology. In addition to providing web development services John’s company also provides a free accounting tool called Earnings Tracker as well as other free software downloads various tutorials articles a business and finance blog and several news feeds.
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