Question - A simple way to get dropdown menu output into a PHP variable?

[at0mic]

I’m trying to get the output of a dropdown menu into a php variable so I can use it to do queries etc.

 

The following code does work, but the div tags are also saved in the variable. Is there another way of doing it without the div tags? Maybe by adding it to _GET in the onchange command.

 

<select name='trade' onchange="document.getElementById('extra').innerHTML = this.value;">
   <option value='item1'>item1</option>
   <option value='item2'>item2</option>
   <option value='item3'>item3</option>
   <option value='item4'>item4</option>
</select>

<?php

$extra = '<div id="extra"></div>';

echo $extra

?>