How to fill form fields according to drop down

Question

i have a form with user name, address and email. the list of names is coming from a database, what i need to do is that when i pick the user name, the address and email info fills the other 2 fields (i have another fields, but i only need those filled) I'm using php with mysql database

Answer 1

This may not be optimal - actually I'm not positive it works since I'm not testing this at all, but I'm sure you will figure it out if it doesn't work:

Assuming your form has a name="personInfo", the name drop down has name="personName", and the address is a text input field named "address".

In the personName select tag add

onChange="updateValues()"

Then you will need some javascript that will be something like this:

function updateValue() {
var addresses = new Array();
<?php
//add some php code to populate the java array. Something like
for ($i=0; $i<$numAddresses; $i++) {
    echo 'addresses['.$i.'] ='.$addressFromDB[$i].';';
}
?>
document.personInfo.address.value = addresses[document.personInfo.personName.selectedIndex];   

}

and repeat the same kind of thing for the email

Answer 2

Obviously, you will have to modify this to match your element ID's and such, but this works for me.

Here is your HTML:

<script type="text/javascript">
function grabInfo(str)
{
if (str=="")
  {
  document.getElementById("contentDiv").innerHTML="";
  return;
  }
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
  {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
  xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
  }
else
  {// code for IE6, IE5
  xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  }
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()
  {
  if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200)
    {
       document.getElementById("contentDiv").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
    }
  }
xmlhttp.open("GET","getinfo.php?q="+str,true);
xmlhttp.send();
}
</script>

<select name="users" onchange="grabInfo(this.value)">
    <option value="" selected="selected">Select a person:</option>
    <option value="1">Person A</option>
    <option value="2">Person B</option>
    </select>

    <div id="contentDiv">

    </div>

And backend PHP (getinfo.php):

<?php
$q=$_GET["q"];

//MySQL connection string


$sql="SELECT * FROM <table> WHERE <parameter> = '".$q."'";

$result = mysql_query($sql);


while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
  {
  echo '<input type="text" id="address" value="' . $row['address'] . '">';
  echo '<input type="text" id="email" value="' . $row['email'] . '">';
  }
?>

contentDiv will be where the two text boxes are displayed. getinfo.php will be the PHP where the actual manipulation of the database will occur.