How to Pre-select an Option in an HTML Drop-Down Menu Using PHP?

How to Pre-Select an Option in a Drop-Down Menu

When editing a database entry, it's often necessary to pre-populate fields with the existing values. This can be done for drop-down menus using HTML and PHP.

In the provided code, the "selected" attribute is being used to set the selected item in the drop-down box. However, this attribute is only being applied to the select element itself, not to individual options.

To correctly set the selected item, the selected attribute needs to be applied to the corresponding option tag. The correct code would look like this:

<select>
  <option value="January" selected="selected">January</option>
  <option value="February">February</option>
  <option value="March">March</option>
  <option value="April">April</option>
</select>

Using PHP, the code would look like this:

<?php $month = 'January'; ?>

<select>
  <option value="January" <?php if ($month == 'January') echo 'selected="selected"'; ?>>January</option>
  <option value="February">February</option>
  <option value="March">March</option>
  <option value="April">April</option>
</select>

Alternatively, an array of values can be created and looped through to create the drop-down menu:

$months = ['January', 'February', 'March', 'April'];
$selectedMonth = 'January';

echo '<select>';
foreach ($months as $value) {
  echo "<option value='$value'" . ($value == $selectedMonth ? ' selected="selected"' : '') . ">$value</option>";
}
echo '</select>';

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