I would like to be able to select a category from a dropdown and depending on the category it will add it to whatever SQL table is it equal with.
I know this answer won't be too helpful for you right now, but sice there is just too much wrong with that code and that approach, here are a few tips:
$article
value! if($article == 'foo' || $article == 'bar') {...}
"This is a ".$adjective." string"
and "This is a {$adjective} string"