Making an option in an HTML dropdown menu selected.
Question by Mason240
Thanks for reading my question.
I have a website that uses PHP for a searchable card database. Right now I have the code for the head/searchbox section on each page, but I want to use functions instead. The function itself is working. The problem is with the drop down boxes. I currently have it set up so that when a user selects and option, and then searches, the selections are selected on the next page.
I am sure that I am having a problem with syntax.
Here is an example of the working code, which is used on the live site right now.
<select name="Type" onchange="this.submit()">
<option value="1" >[All Card Types] </option>
<option value="Hero" <?php if($_GET['Type'] == "Hero") echo "selected='selected'"; ?>> Hero </option>
<option value="Ally" <?php if($_GET['Type'] == "Ally") echo "selected='selected'"; ?>> Ally </option>
</select>
This is the relevant code from the function, which is not working, and is on the test site (ignore the error):
function searchBox(){
//Cell 1
echo '
<select name="Type" onchange="this.submit()">
<option value="1" >[All Card Types] </option>
<option value="Hero" <?php if($_GET["Type"] == "Hero") { echo "selected=selected" ; }?>> Hero </option>
<option value="Event" <?php if($_GET["Type"] == "Event") { echo "selected=selected"; }?>> Event </option>
</select>
';
}
As you can see in the test page, the dropdown menu doesn’t function like it does on the live page.
Thanks for the help!
Answer by Jonah
You can’t embed <?php tags in a string like that. You have to concatenate it with ternary operators.
function searchBox(){
//Cell 1
echo '
<select name="Type" onchange="this.submit()">
<option value="1" >[All Card Types] </option>
<option value="Hero"' . ($_GET['Type'] == 'Hero' ? ' selected=""' : '') . '> Hero </option>
<option value="Event"' . ($_GET['Type'] == 'Event' ? ' selected=""' : '') . '> Event </option>
</select>
';
}
But for the sake of maintainability, you might do something more like this:
function searchBox() {
$types = array('Hero', 'Event');
$output = '<select name="Type" onchange="this.submit()">';
$output .= ' <option value="1" >[All Card Types] </option>';
foreach ($types as $type) {
$output .= '<option value="' . $type . '"' . ($_GET['Type'] == $type ? ' selected=""' : '') . '> ' . $type . ' </option>';
}
$output .= '</select>';
echo $output;
}
Answer by Starx
