Trying to preserve values of drop down menus after Submit...

[AdrianRobinson]

I'm simply trying to set up a form where, if when a user clicks 'Submit', and then 'Back', the values from the form are preserved. My question is, how do I preserve the values of drop down menus. The following is a snippet of my code:

 

<select name="dropdown_dept" id="dept_list">
<option value=0><?php echo "Please select one..."?></option> 
<?php
    $dropdown_dept = "select dept_name from departments";
    $result_dept = $db_conn->query($dropdown_dept);
      
    if (!$result_dept)
    {
      echo '<p>Unable to get department data.</p>';
      return false;
    }
  
    for($i=0; $i<$result_dept->num_rows; $i++)
    { 
      $app_name_row = $result_dept -> fetch_array();
      ?>
        <option><?php echo($app_name_row[0]); ?></option> 
      <? }

      ?>
      </select>

 

 

Above is where I have set up a drop down menu of departments. Given that code, how can I preserve the department name after a user clicks 'Submit'?

[Drummin]

Add this between the select and first option tag.

IF (isset($_POST['dropdown_dept'])){
echo "<option>$_POST[dropdown_dept]</option>";
}

[AdrianRobinson]

That worked! Thanks!

[Pikachu2000]

Your <option> tags should have a value= attribute to be valid markup.