CI form dropdown

CI_form_dropdown

Now let's imagine that you are writing a data entry form in HTML, and you want
a drop-down query box. Let's say this drop-down query box shows three options and allows the user to select one of them. In HTML, a drop-down box can be created like this:
<select name="type">
<option value="1">www.this.com</option>
<option value="2">www.that.com</option>
<option value="3" selected>www.theother.com</option>
</select>
CI's version is both shorter and, because it works from an array, more adapted to PHP processing:
$urlarray = array(
'1' => 'www.this.com',
'2' => 'www.that.com',
'3' => 'www.theother.com',
);
$variable .= form_dropdown('url', $urlarray, '1');

As $variable is not defined, we can echo it as below:

echo form_dropdown('url', $urlarray, '1');

In HTML, you need to type 154 characters; in CI, 128.