How to populate a dropdown menu from database in CodeIgniter [Workaround]

If you happened to work with the ‘form_validation’ library and dropdown lists, and had to populate the default value from database, I am sure you would have come across this issue too. I’ve been having this issue for the past couple of days and found a workaround to tackle the issue.  Thought this would help you too in your projects.

 

Scenario

• You have a form with multiple form elements such as textbox, dropdowns, etc…
• You have to pass in some defaults from the database to take its initial values.
• After the form filling the user submits the form but unfortunately it happens to have errors.
• Now you have to ignore the defaults you initially had and prompt the user with the values they entered before they failed the form submission.

Note: At this point the dropdown should populate with all the values but it should select NOT its default value but the selection user made before they submitted.

 

Workaround

• Get the defaults from the database.
• Generate the array of dropdown list items.
• Add the workaround function that will swap the default and the last submitted value.

 

Example

//Controller

$this->load->library(‘form_validation’);

$this->load->helper(‘form_helper’);

$this->form_validation->set_rules(‘states’, ‘State’, ‘required|trim’);

if ($this->form_validation->run() == TRUE)          {
…
}

//Model

function get_states($mode = false,$content){

$this->db->select(‘abv, states’);

$this->db->order_by(“states”, “asc”);

$q = $this->db->get(‘states’);

if($mode){

$data[‘ ‘] = $content;

}

foreach ($q->result_array() as $row) {

$data{$row[‘abv’]} = $row[‘status’];

}

return $data;

}

//View

// Workaround function which will swap the default value

function set_my_defaults($item,$default) {

if(set_value($item)!=””){

return set_value($item);

}

else {

return $default;
}
}

$this->load->model(‘my_model’);

$default = ‘NY’ ; // Initial default value you get from a database or hard code

$states = $this->my_model->get_states(true,’Please Select’);

$selected = set_my_defaults(‘state’,$default);

echo form_dropdown(‘state’,$states,$selected,’class=”dropdown_style”‘);

 

Hope this will work for you too. If you find a better way to implement this or have any question please feel free to leave a comment.

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