Dropdown, formatting

[jea]

First, sorry for poor English.
I hav the following task:
In a Mysql I have a table of events. An event is described in 3 fields: date, place, activity.
Now I want to build a dropdown list where users can select one of the events by klicking, all in a wellknown manner.

So far I have no problems, but the problem is that the text in the dropdown list is a mess. Two of the fields are of variable length.

I tried a combination of adding spaces and then truncate with substr. It was a good improvement, but not good enough.
Could anyone of you give me a hint to bring me inte the right track?

Thanks in beforehand
Jan-Erik
Sweden.
***************

[ronverdonk]

Please show your code so we can look at what you have done until now.

Ronald :cool:

[jea]

Please show your code so we can look at what you have done until now.

Ronald :cool:

Ronald: Do I dare to? :-)
[php]
< body>
< ?php
include "TJanslut.p hp";
$query = ("SELECT evdate, evname,evplats FROM events") or die ( mysql_error() );
$result=mysql_q uery($query);
$num=mysql_num_ rows($result);
? >
< form action="action" method="post">
< select name="option">
< ?php
while ($row = mysql_fetch_arr ay($result)) {
echo "<option value=\"$row[evdate]\">$row[evdate]$row[evname]$row[evplats]\n</option>";
}
? >
< /select>
< input type="submit">
< /form>
< /body>[/php]

[kamill]

i am unable to understand your problem....Can you describe more...Actually i am unable to understand your requirement...

[jea]

i am unable to understand your problem....Can you describe more...Actually i am unable to understand your requirement...

The result from the above code looks like this:
070107 Shopping London
070108 Visiting Grandma Stockholm
070109 Party Berlin

I want it to look like this:
070107 Shopping....... ...........Lond on
070108 Visiting Grandma....Stoc kholm
070109 Party.......... .............Be rlin

[acoder]

The result from the above code looks like this:
070107 Shopping London
070108 Visiting Grandma Stockholm
070109 Party Berlin

I want it to look like this:
070107 Shopping....... ...........Lond on
070108 Visiting Grandma....Stoc kholm
070109 Party.......... .............Be rlin

If you use a fixed width font, you can check the length of each value pair (e.g. Shopping,London ). Find the max. length and add 2 or 3 to leave a bit of space between values. Use this max. figure (+2/3) to determine the number of dots to add in between values. If you're using a variable length font, the problem becomes a bit more difficult (you'll probably still have alignment issues), so i suggest if you want to guarantee alignment, use a fixed-width font.

[lordspace]

Hi,

is that what you want ?

[php]
<?php

$row['evdate'] = '070107';
$row['evname'] = 'Shopping';
$row['evplats'] = 'London';

$max_dots = 30;
$row['evname'] .= str_repeat('.', abs(strlen($row['evname']) - $max_dots));

//echo "<option value=\"$row[evdate]\">$row[evdate]$row[evname]$row[evplats]\n</option>";
printf("<option value=\"{$row['evdate']}\">{$row['evdate']} {$row['evname']}{$row['evplats']}</option>\n");
?>
[/php]

Result would be:

<option value="070107"> 070107 Shopping....... ............... London</option>

Svet

[jea]

Thank you so very much, both of you!
problems nicely solved with a combination of your advice.
I used the code directly, adjusted to max 15 dots, and changed to font Courier.
Also, I changed from dots to nbsp.
Great!

[lordspace]

printf() is not needed, you may use echo().
Basically you need following code before the echo() function

[php]
$max_dots = 30;
$row['evname'] .= str_repeat('.', abs(strlen($row['evname']) - $max_dots));
[/php]

[jea]

A new question arrived:
I want to show 5 events i the list box, and tried width size='5' in the select tag.
But it does not function, is this a result of the technics used?

[ronverdonk]

It is easier to control the width of the select box by using an inline style attribute, such as:
[html]<select name="make" style="width:30 0px;">[/html]
Ronald :cool:

[acoder]

A new question arrived:
I want to show 5 events i the list box, and tried width size='5' in the select tag.
But it does not function, is this a result of the technics used?

Use

<select size="5" ...>

That should display 5 items at once instead of a dropdown.

[jea]

Thanks a lot to all of you for this excellent support. When I woke up this morning I was this <=> good at PHPing, now I feel I'm this <============ > good.
Sorry you at first did not understand what I was asking for, but it is no easy task to express oneself in a foreign language. Try some Swedish!