How to preserve selected year option from a drop-down list after form validation in PHP

Question

I have a form where the user inserts and selects some data in a form, one of the select fields is his/her birth year.

The drop-down list is populated fine, BUT after submitting the form for validation, I can not preserve the selected year and the user has to re-select it again!

This is what I've done:

<select size="1" name="birthYear" tabindex="7">
    // Please Select Option
    <option selected value="-1" <?php if(isset($_POST['birthYear']) && $_POST['birthYear'] == '-1') { echo 'selected="selected"'; } ?> >Please Select</option>
    // populate birth years range
    <?php
        $currentYear = date('Y');
        $minimumBirthYear = $currentYear - 10;
        $MaximumBirthYear = $currentYear - 100;
        for($i = $minimumBirthYear; $i >= $MaximumBirthYear; $i--){
            echo '<option value="'.$i.'">'.$i.'</option><br />';
        }
    ?>
</select>

Can you please help me in applying the

<?php if(isset($_POST['birthYear']) && $_POST['birthYear'] == '-1') { echo 'selected="selected"'; } ?> >

in the for loop? I've tried it in different ways but with no luck!

Thanks in advance...

Answer 1

Try this:

for($i = $minimumBirthYear; $i >= $MaximumBirthYear; $i--){
      echo '<option '.(isset($_POST['birthYear']) && $_POST['birthYear'] == $i ? 'selected' : '').' value="'.$i.'">'.$i.'</option><br />';
}

Answer 2

<select size="1" name="birthYear" tabindex="7">
// Please Select Option
<option selected value="-1">Please Select</option>
// populate birth years range
<?php
    $currentYear = date('Y');
    $minimumBirthYear = $currentYear - 10;
    $MaximumBirthYear = $currentYear - 100;
    for($i = $minimumBirthYear; $i >= $MaximumBirthYear; $i--)
    {
        echo sprintf("<option value='%s' %s >%s</option><br/>", $i, isset($_POST['birthYear']) && $_POST['birthYear']? "selected='selected'": "", $i);
    }
?>