[Silverjoker]

Hi, I'm writing a form to allow people to add entries to a mysql database table of used books.

I'm using the following code to populate scroll-down lists from the database for some fields of the form:

Code:

<?php
$Qauthor="SELECT DISTINCT author FROM booklist ORDER BY author ASC";
$author=mysql_query($Qauthor);
echo "Author: <select name=author value=''></option>";
while($ar=mysql_fetch_array($author))
{
echo "<option value=$ar[author]>$ar[author]</option>";
}
echo "</select>";
?>

This works well, except for one problem. The author names in the mysql table are written in the following way: Lastname, Firstname
The names on the list are shown correctly, but when I try to fetch the data from the form to update the database, everything after the comma (mostly the first name, but sometimes also the middle name) does not show.
I tested it using simply

Code:

echo $_POST['author']

it shows only the following: Lastname,

It's my first time using PHP and I'm at a loss to what I should do to fix this. Is the problem with how the scroll-down list is generated?
Thanks in advance.

[alxkls]

not sure how your database is structured but im guessing with a small modification to the query i might work... try

Code:

$Qauthor="SELECT author FROM group by author booklist ORDER BY author ASC";

[Silverjoker]

The table is sorted by an AUTO_INCREMENT id number, the other columns are just different information about the books (eg. title, author, etc). The full author name is in one column: "Grigorieff, Vladimir" without quotes.

After a few more tests, I realized the problem was not with my query, as posting the query by itself worked well. Also the names are complete when selecting from the list.

The problem is when I try to use the input data from a <select> list, using $_POST['author']. Where it should read "Grigorieff, Vladimir", we only see "Grigorieff,".
In fact, any data after a blankspace doesn't show.

I hope there is a way around that, because the table is quite big.

[alxkls]

see the select tag? theres something very wrong about it... change it to
echo 'Author: <select name="author">'; and leave the rest as it is.

edit:
oooo shiiiii.... a lot more than that is wrong...

Code:

echo '<option value="'.$ar['author'].'">'.$ar['author'].'</option>';

[Silverjoker]

It worked. I had used a code shown by someone on a forum, and didn't realize it was this messed up.

Thanks a lot!