Holy cow, thank you SO much!

Dami — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:24:59 +0000

Holy cow, thank you SO much! I'm already using a little jQuery for some field visibility toggling, so this should work fine!

Oh, now I see. You are

teammatt3 — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:06:00 +0000

Oh, now I see. You are changing the name of a feature. I missed the boat on that

Is there any way for JS to trigger a mysql query?

Indirectly, yes. You need to make a call to PHP using an AJAX request.

If you are willing to use jQuery, you can use code like:

// Attach events after the DOM is fully loaded
$(document).ready(function(){
    // create a change event on your main select box
    $('#feat_category').bind('change', function(){
        // get the category_id from the drop down
        var category_id = $(this).val();
    
        // make a call to features_for_category.php with a GET parameter called category_id that contains
        // the category_id. Your PHP code only needs to generate a select box for the features in that
        // category
        $.get('/features_for_category.php', {'category_id' : category_id}, function(select_box){
            // get the content of your PHP script (a select box) and insert it into the page (you need 
            // to create a new div called #features-drop-down-wrapper in your HTML
            $('#features-drop-down-wrapper').html(select_box);
        });
    });
});

There are a half dozen things going on in that code, but hopefully you get the gist of what is happening.

The purpose of this form is

Dami — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 04:12:04 +0000

The purpose of this form is so the site admin can edit the table contents, like changing the category and/or feature. Is there any way for JS to trigger a mysql query? Example, using the onChange event of the category to trigger the query to populate the features based on the selected item in category?

My other option is to list both category and feature in one drop down, but make the text field only change the feature. Not an elegant solution....

Thanks so much for looking over my problem!

I don't think you can

teammatt3 — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 03:30:00 +0000

I don't think you can accomplish that without using JavaScript. JavaScript can be painful, especially if you are new to it.

Have you thought about displaying all the categories and features in a table with radio buttons?

+---------------------+-------------------+---------------------+
| Category 1          |  Category 2       |  Category 3         |
|  o Power Steering   |   o 4 wheel drive |   o Battery warmer  |
|  o Air conditioning |   o Hybrid        |   o LED headlights  |
+---------------------+-------------------+---------------------+
| Category 4          |
|  o Trunk monkey     |
+---------------------+

That is easier to write and it is more usable (I hate drop down boxes).