PHP Array and HTML Form Drop Down List

As you have to include key and value both key is to show the text and value for POST

<?php foreach($categories as $key => $category) {
   $category = htmlspecialchars($category);?>
   <option value="<?php echo $category; ?>"><?php echo $key; ?></option>
<?php
}
?>

you have not included keys in foreach loop

foreach($categories as $id=>$category){
    $category = htmlspecialchars($category);
    echo "<option value="{$id}">{$category}</option>";
}

foreach($categories as $category => $category_id)

Is what you're looking for.

<select name="category_id">
<option value=""></option>
<?php
$keys = array_keys($categories);
for($i=0; $i<count($categories); $i++)
{?>
    <option value="<?php echo $keys[$i]; ?>"><?php echo $categories[$i]; ?></option>
<?php
}
?>
</select>

Supposing that $categories is the array you have shown above.

I made this one

• The first argument is the array.

• The second argument is an array of attributes such as your form name, id or class.

• The third argument is for when you have multidimensional array such as one you'd get back from an sql result, it should have two subsets, one with the key 'value' and the other keyed as 'option'. This allows you to set what should be enclosed in the option tag and what should be the value for that option.

• Lastly we have the fourth parameter which basically adds the 'selected' tag in the option with a value of $selected or where the element's key is equals to $selected

.

function array_to_drop_down($array, $attributes=false /*array('attr_1' => 'value')*/, $kv=false /* array('value' => 'key1', 'option' => 'key2')*/, $selected=false )
{
    $html_data  = "<select ";

    if ( $attributes != false && is_array($attributes) )
    {
        foreach ( $attributes as $name => $value )
        {
            $html_data .= " {$name}=\"{$value}\" ";
        }
    }

    $html_data  .= '>';

    foreach( $array as $key => $option )
    {
        $select_html = '';

        if( $selected != false )
        {
            if( ($kv && $selected == $option[$kv['value']]) )
            {
                $select_html = 'selected="selected"';
            }
            elseif ( $selected == $key && ! is_array($option) )
            {
                $select_html = 'selected="selected"';
            }
        }

        if ( $kv == false )
        {$html_data .= "<option {$select_html} value=\"{$key}\">{$option}</option>";}
        else
            {$html_data .= "<option {$select_html} value=\"{$option[$kv['value']]}\">{$option[$kv['option']]}</option>";}
    }


    return $html_data . "</select>";
}

Here it is when it's called:

$array = array('Apple', 'Banana', 'Watermelon');
array_to_drop_down($array, array('name' => 'my_form'), false, 1);

This should render the following HTML:

<select  name="my_form" >
    <option  value="0">Apple</option>
    <option selected="selected" value="1">Banana</option>
    <option  value="2">Watermelon</option>
</select>

Here is another example with a two dimensional array:

$array = array(
                array('name' => 'John', 'student_id' => 1234), 
                array('name' => 'Jen', 'student_id' => 5678),
                array('name' => 'Sally', 'student_id' => 9012)
              );

array_to_drop_down( $array, 
                    array('name' => 'my_form', 'id' => 'the_form_id'), 
                    array('option' => 'name', 'value' => 'age'), 1);

We've asked the function to select where the option's value is 5678, this should output

<select  name="my_form" id="the_form_id" >
    <option  value="1234">John</option>
    <option selected="selected" value="5678">Jen</option>
    <option  value="9012">Sally</option>
</select>

Looks a little long to set up but if you're going to be repeating this kind of thing many times it will look neater on your code rather than a bunch of foreach loops to create the form yourself