Joomla 1.5 Additional select tag values

This continues on my blog post on how to add a select tag through the Joomla! framework. The code that follows will show you how to add to the ObjectList for a Select tag. This is especially useful where you have to use a select tag in a search form.

I normally use a value of 0 to indicate a search of "All Values".

The first thing you do is create a class at the top of your page as follows:

<?php
class MySelectObject{
var $id;
var $name;
}
?>

Then to use it do the following:

<?php
$db = &JFactory::getDBO();
$query = "SELECT `id`,`name` FROM
#__town";
$db->setQuery($query);
$townlist = $db->loadObjectList();

/*Create an instance of MySelectObject*/
$mso = new MySelectObject();

/*Set values*/
$mso->id = 0;
$mso->name = 'Any Town';

/*Create an array for insertion*/
$tmpArr = array(0 => $mso);

/*Merge with array result from query. Add to the front of list*/
$selectList =
array_merge($tmpArr,$townlist);

/*Make MySelectObject the default selected*/
echo
JHTML::_('Select.genericlist',$selectList,'town',"","id","name",0);

?>

Joomla! 1.5 How to create a Select tag through the Joomla Framework

Today I needed to display a list of towns from a database table. Nowhere on the Joomla! documentation could I find an example on how to achieve that, so I had to go figure it out once again.

I have a database table that contains all my towns. First I had to create a query to retrieve the towns and put them in an object list.

The code for that follows.

<?php
$db =& JFactory::getDBO();

$query = 'SELECT `id`,`name` FROM #__town';
$db->setQuery( $query );
$townlist = $db->loadObjectList();
?>

Ok now that I have a list of towns I simply have to use JHTMLSelect.genericlist() to output the HTML code for my select.

The code to do that follows:

<?php
echo JHTML::_('Select.genericlist',$townlist,"town","","id","name",1);
?>

In the code I am simply creating a select from the town list with the options values set as id and the texts set as name (as per the query) . The 1 at the end indicates the selected option. 

If I for example get the selected option from a post/get request, the code will look as follows.

<?php
$selectedId = JRequest::getVar( 'id',0);
echo JHTML::_('Select.genericlist',$townlist,"town","","id","name",$selectedId);
?>