DropDown Lists

[hfactor]

Tweet

Hi all,
I have many drop down/selection lists that need constant updating. These lists are used on a number of different pages. Is there a way to create a master list that can be modified in one file that can be used on different pages? Seems simple enough??

Thanks in advance...

[Dannyg]

You could hold your categories in a database and dynamically create your drop down lists. Ask your hosting company if you have a database and scripting in your plan.

Danny

[Donk]

if you have PHP installed create a file called dropdown.php and include

<?php
include ("dropdown.php");
?>

In the appropriate section of your pages

Bob

[hfactor]

Yes I do have php, so

<?php
include ("dropdownlist1.php");
include ("dropdownlist2.php");
include ("dropdownlist3.php");
.
.
.
.
?>

Then how do I include the "option value" values in the list?

[Donk]

I think the easiest way of doing it is to create an options.csv file in the format:

option1,optionvalue1
option2,optionvalue2
option3,optionvalue3

then in your main Html page include these lines:

<form>
<select>
<?php 
$fp= fopen("options.csv","r");
while ($data=fgetcsv($fp,1000,",")){
echo "<option value='$data[1]'>$data[0]</option>\n";
}
fclose($fp);
?>
</select>
</form>

Then simply edit the csv file using word pad or excel

Bob

[hfactor]

Then everytime the page loads, I do a fopen? What will that do to my page loading time?

[Donk]

assuming you do not have a few thousand options it should take less time than it would take to load a small gif.

Bob

[Tom]

Yeah wouldn't take too long to load. I normally just hold the values in an array in a central common.inc.php kind of file, then dynamically create the list wherever I want it. This is also better than storing them as static HTML as you can preset fields on a form against the value stored in the $_GET or $_POST variables.