Populate HTML dropdown from text file

Question

I have a dropdown menu with hard-coded values:

<select name="value" id="value">
  <option value="A">A</option>
  <option value="B">B</option>
  <option value="C">C</option>
  <option value="D">D</option>
</select>

I would like to load a text file to populate the values. The text file will have each value on a new line.

values.txt

A
B
C
D

I've tried this:

<select>
    <?php
    if ($file = @fopen('values.txt', 'r')) {
        while(($line = fgets($file)) !== false) {
            echo "<option>{$line}</option>";
        }
        fclose($file);
    }
?>
</select>

But there are no choices on the dropdown when I do this.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

You may not have permission to read the file. I copied and pasted your code and it works fine. If you're on a unix system you can do sudo chmod 744 values.txt — ksealey
– ksealey, Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 16:45
Get rid of @ fopen, so that you can see error if any. Use only fopen() — Rohit
– Rohit, Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 16:48
@ksealey I'm running on Windows 7. Later on in the program, I have javascript code that reads a .csv file just fine, so I don't think it could be a permissions issue. Thanks for the suggestion, though. — CdSdw
– CdSdw, Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 16:52

Midas · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-14 17:05:35Z

2

You can create an array element of the list

$filename = 'values.txt';
$eachlines = file($filename, FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES);//create an array
echo '<select name="value" id="value">';
foreach($eachlines as $lines){
    echo "<option>{$lines}</option>";
}
echo '</select>';

edited Jun 14, 2016 at 17:05

Midas

7,1695 gold badges41 silver badges56 bronze badges

answered Jun 14, 2016 at 16:50

Amit Ray

3,4753 gold badges23 silver badges38 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

6 Comments

CdSdw Over a year ago

I tried your code just now, but still, the dropdown menu wasn't populated with anything... :(

Amit Ray Over a year ago

@CdSdw give the full path to the file name.

Midas Over a year ago

The curly brackets syntax won't work with single quotes.

Amit Ray Over a year ago

@Midas Thanks a lot and sorry to CdSdw for single quotes

CdSdw Over a year ago

Hmm I think it might be my newbie-ness at HTML, but when I create a new HTML file with <!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><body>(your code)</body></html>, the only thing displayed on the screen when I open the HTML file is the literal text "; foreach($eachlines as $lines){ echo "{$lines}"; } echo ""; ?>...I'm not sure why the echoes are being displayed literally. I changed all of the single quotes to double quotes to be safe.

|

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Populate HTML dropdown from text file

1 Answer 1

6 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

6 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related