retrieving select box..

[joyce]

i have a select box which display all the countries. when user register, they will need to choose they are from which country.

my problem is when retrieve out the country for display purpose. how am i suppose to do it?

this is part of the code:

echo "<SELECT class=ft1 name=country>";
echo "<option>Please Select</option>";
echo "<option value=AF>Afghanistan</option>";
echo "<option value=AL>Albania</option>";
echo "<option value=DZ>Algeria</option>"; 

for normal select box, i will do something like this when retrieving..

echo "<option ";
if ($country == '') 
  echo "selected";
echo ">";

echo "<option value=AF ";
if ($country == 'AF')
  echo "selected";
echo " >Afghanistan";

echo "<option value=AL ";
if ($country == 'AL')
  echo "selected";
echo " >Albania";
echo "</option>"; 

i dowan to use this way because the country list is too long. if ihave to use this method, i wil have to do if statement for each and every country.

is there any alternative ways that i can do? shorter method?? better ways?? pls help!

[Goldfinger]

using the switch function would be a lot better than using if statements.

switch ($country) {

case AF:
  echo ">AF";
break;

case AL:
  echo "AL"
break;

case default:
 echo "You must select a country";
break;
} 

[MarcHanlon]

function genOptions($passedarray,$default="") {
    while ($thiskey = key($passedarray)) {
        $returnval .= "<option value=\"$thiskey\"";
        if ($thiskey == $default) { $returnval .= " selected"; }
        $returnval .= ">" . $passedarray[$thiskey] . "</option>";
        next($passedarray);
    }
    return $returnval;
}

$countries = array("AF" => "Afghanistan","AL" => "Albania","DZ"=>"Algeria");

$countries = asort($countries);

$countryoptions genOptions($countries,$country); 

This probably the best solution I can think of for you, basically it takes an array of countries and builds the select options, adding the selected attribute to the value which is passed through $country. Comments on this code are welcome, I use it in one of my own websites.

Marc.