HTML <Select> <Option> default based on MySQL data

Question

I have a simple inventory database and on the input_data form, one of the input fields is field, as follow:

<select>
    <option>In Inventory</option>
    <option>In Process</option>
    <option>Shipped/in-transit</option>
    <option>Received by recipient</option>
</select>

If for example I input a data with "In Process" and later I would like to update that perticular data. The default back to "In Inventory" on my update_page.php file. I would like to see the "In Process" value selected.

Here is a snippet from my non-working code from my update_page.php:

<select name="status" value="<?php echo $row['status']; ?>">
    <option>In Inventory</option>
    <option>In Process</option>
    <option>Shipped/in-transit</option>
    <option>Received by recipient</option>
</select>

Answer 1

Select has no value attribute in HTML - you can have multiple options selected, and this is determined by the selected attribute on the option element

Mucky way:

<select name="status">
    <option<?php if ($row['status'] == "In Inventory"): ?> selected="selected"<?php endif; ?>>In Inventory</option>
    <option<?php if ($row['status'] == "In Process"): ?> selected="selected"<?php endif; ?>>In Process</option>
    <option<?php if ($row['status'] == "Shipped/in-transit"): ?> selected="selected"<?php endif; ?>>Shipped/in-transit</option>
    <option<?php if ($row['status'] == "Received by recipient"): ?> selected="selected"<?php endif; ?>>Received by recipient</option>
</select>

Slightly better way:

 <?php
      $options = array("In Inventory", "In Process", "Shipped/in-transit", "Received by recipient");
 ?>

 <select>
     <?php foreach ($options as $option): ?>
         <option value="<?php echo $option; ?>"<?php if ($row['status'] == $option): ?> selected="selected"<?php endif; ?>>
             <?php echo $option; ?>
         </option>
     <?php endforeach; ?>
 </select>

Best way - store these options in a database table - probably better using ID values rather than strings (allows for easier updating of option labels) and loop over the possible options taking from a DB query like I have above. If this select list is used a lot, cache the results of the query to get the options (remember that you'd need to clear the cache if the list gets updated)