PHP: Dynamic Drop down with optgroup

Question

I am developing a drop down menu that uses HTML optgroups for group names that employees are a part of. Here is the MySQL query and output:

mysql> SELECT employe         


        

Answer 1

The two for loops are not nested in your code:

foreach ($groups as $label => $opt) { ?>
    <optgroup label="<?php echo $label; ?>">
<?php   } <-- wrong here
    foreach ($groups[$label] as $id => $name) { ?>
        <option value="<?php echo $id; ?>"><?php echo $name; ?></option>
<?php } ?>

The result is that first all opt groups are created and then the employees for the last group are added (because $label and $opt are also available after the loop finished).

You have to nest the loops (using alternative syntax for control structures):

<?php foreach($groups as $label => $opt): ?>
    <optgroup label="<?php echo $label; ?>">
    <?php foreach ($opt as $id => $name): ?>
        <option value="<?php echo $id; ?>"><?php echo $name; ?></option>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
    </optgroup>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Furthermore, I think you have to use the emp_id, not the grp_id when creating the array:

while ($qa = $employees->GetRows()) {
    $groups[$qa['groupname']][$qa['emp_id']] = $qa['empname'];
}