How to fill drop down list from Php

Hello

This is my second post, its about how to fill DropDownList from Php using php with smarty template engine and jQuery

I am working on a project now I am using php and smarty template engine, I need to fill drop down lists from php most of you will tell me to use the classic way by printing the <select> tag with its option from php directly but as I said I am using smarty template engine and I needed more efficient way so here was the solution for doing that

At first I have created a function that will take three parameters the name of dropdown list and the options array and a flag

Function code

<?php

function FillDropDownList($name, $options, $selectOption = true)

{

    global $Scripts;

    if ($selectOption) {

        $Scripts .= "\n$('select[name=$name]').append($(\"<option />\").val('-1').text('--Select--')); ";

    }

    foreach ($options as $var => $val) {

        $Scripts .= "\n$('select[name=$name]').append($(\"<option />\").val('$val').text('$var')); ";

    }

    $Smarty->assign('Scripts', $Scripts);

}

?>

Hint : I am using jQuery Instead of regular JavaScript

As you can see here I have generated a JavaScript code that will fill the drop down list with each option in the array "options"

After generating the code assign it to Scripts variable in smarty

And in my page I simply add the following piece of code

<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function() {

  {$Scripts}

});

</script>

Example of call

Php code:

$Options = array("First Option"=>"1", "Second Option"=>"2", "Thired Option"=>"3");

FillDropDownList("dropdownlist", $Options, true);

$Smarty->display("template.tpl");

Template

<select name="dropdownlist"></select>

<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function() {

  {$Scripts}

});

</script>

Example of the output code

<select name="dropdownlist"></select>

<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function() {

$('select[name=dropdownlist]').append($("<option />").val('-1').text('--Select--')); 

$('select[name=dropdownlist]').append($("<option />").val('1').text('First Option')); 

$('select[name=dropdownlist]').append($("<option />").val('2').text('Second Option')); 

$('select[name=dropdownlist]').append($("<option />").val('3').text('Thired Option')); 

});

</script>

Example of the UI output

Handling Mutiple Selections In PHP

Hello there

this is my firs post, hopefully it will be useful and the blog overall will be a good reference to all developers

this post is about how to handle multiple selections in the same form like delete multiple emails or applying an action to multiple items

usually most of developers handle each item alone, like a delete button beside each email but what if you wanted to handle all the items once together

here is the solution for doing that

consider we have a table called "items" contains items data with a unique ID field

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `items` (

  `ItemId` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

  `ItemName` varchar(30) NOT NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY (`ItemId`)

)

I am going to use a usual query to read the data from the table

<?php

mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "");

mysql_select_db("test");

$query = "SELECT ItemId, ItemName FROM items";

$result = mysql_query($query);

?>

<form method="post" action="page.php">

<table border="1">

<tr>

    <td>#</td>

    <td>Item Name</td>

</tr>

<?php

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){

    echo "<tr>";

    echo "<td>";

    echo "<input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"Items[]\" value=\"" . $row['ItemId'] . "\"/>";

    echo "</td>";

    echo "<td>";

    echo $row['ItemName'];

    echo "</td>";

    echo "</tr>";   

}

?>

</table>

<input type="submit" name="delete" value="Delete" />

</form>

The magic goes here

echo "<input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"Items[]\" value=\"" . $row['ItemId'] . "\"/>";

when you name all the checkboxes the same name with [] after it the php will consider it ass an array and give each selected item a index in the array with the ItemId as its value

if I selected item number 1 and 2 the Items array will contain two items with the value of there ItemId's

output preview

And now I will add a piece of code to handle the delete button

if ($_POST['delete']) {

    $ids = join(",", $_POST['Items']);

    mysql_query("DELETE FROM items WHERE ItemId IN (" . $ids . ")");

    echo count($_POST['Items']) . " Items Has Been Deleted";

}

The whole code will be

<?php

mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "");

mysql_select_db("test");

if ($_POST['delete']) {

    $ids = join(",", $_POST['Items']);

    mysql_query("DELETE FROM items WHERE ItemId IN (" . $ids . ")");

    echo count($_POST['Items']) . " Items Has Been Deleted";

}

$query = "SELECT ItemId, ItemName FROM items";

$result = mysql_query($query);

?>

<form method="post" action="page.php">

<table border="1">

<tr>

    <td>#</td>

    <td>Item Name</td>

</tr>

<?php

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {

    echo "<tr>";

    echo "<td>";

    echo "<input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"Items[]\" value=\"" . $row['ItemId'] . "\"/>";

    echo "</td>";

    echo "<td>";

    echo $row['ItemName'];

    echo "</td>";

    echo "</tr>";

}

?>

</table>

<input type="submit" name="delete" value="Delete" />

</from>