How to Handle multiple selection drop down list box

ou can read how drop down list boxes works for selecting one options out of many. You have also seen how the data of a pull down list box is handled inside a form. Here PHP is used to collect the selection of the form for further processing.

As you have seen in our processing script we collect the option selected by user by using appropriate GET or POST methods. Here is one example. Let us say the list box of colors we have used and the option selected by user is collected like this

$color=$_POST['color'];

or

$color=$_GET['color'];

Based on the form method ( GET or POST ) we can get or collect the option selected and store them in variable $color.

Same way let us see how we can get multiple selections from a drop down list box. Here is the demo of multiple selection pull down list box.

Here we get the selected values as array ( not as a single value ) , now this array we can loop through and display the elements. Here is the code to display the list box and then the collection of selected options.

 Blue Green Red Yelllow Select a Color  White  

Here is the code to handle the above script.

<form method=post action=''>
<select name='color[]' size=4 multiple>
<option value='blue'>Blue</option>
<option value='green'>Green</option>
<option value='red'>Red</option>
<option value='yellow'>Yelllow</option>
<option value='' selected>Select a Color </option>
<option value='white'>White</option>
</select>
<input type=submit></form>

///// collecting form data /////

@$color= $_POST['color'];
if( is_array($color)){
while (list ($key, $val) = each ($color)) {
echo "$val <br>";
}
}//else{echo "not array";}