dropdown menu which populates another dropdown menu

[pendle666]

Hello

On my webpage I want to have a dropdown list - containing some placenames eg:

London
Birmingham
Manchester
Leeds

and when a person selects, say London, a second dropdown menu gives the following options

Newham
Islington
Deptford
Paddington


Can this be done? I've got some regular dropdown menus available which the visitor can use to search my database, but my new tables are a little more complicated

thanks

Pendle

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Pendle, you might be able to use the same mechanism I use in this FAQ on the JavaScript section:

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=3350

That's doing it on the Client-side, if you've got a somewhat reasonable number of placenames (because you need a separate drop-down list for each placename).

If, however, you have a situation where you have a changing list of placenames, and each placename's "neighborhood" menu also changes, then I think you are going to have to implement a server-side solution that produces your web page dynamically.

This might help:

Client-side solution
Pro: Fast as Captain Slickery!
Con: A pain to update if the data changes often.

Server-side solution
Pro: Automatically updates when you update the database online
Con: A lot more work to set up and slower response to the Client, because of the repeated calls to the db.

Does that help at all?

Cheers,


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[pendle666]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Pendle

 

[johnwm]

Looks like an ideal candidate for AJAX. Have a look in forum1600 as you can get the power and flexibility of a server db solution with the speed of a client solution, particularly if there is a substantial amount of data in total.

If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller

 

[BigRed1212]

Google "Dynamic Dependent Dropdowns" for tons of references.