Creating a dropdown from MySQL database

Data and Databases
1

Hey everyone! I’m stuck trying to make a dropdown menu using data from my MySQL Workbench database. For some reason, my menu isn’t showing any values at all. I’m working with WordPress and I’m pretty sure my config is correct since I’m not getting any errors.

Here’s a simplified version of what I’m trying to do:

function connect_to_db() {
    $conn = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'user', 'pass', 'my_database');
    if (!$conn) {
        die('Database connection failed: ' . mysqli_connect_error());
    }
    return $conn;
}

$conn = connect_to_db();
$query = mysqli_query($conn, 'SELECT * FROM items');

echo '<select name="ItemList">';
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query)) {
    echo '<option value="' . $row['item_id'] . '">' . $row['item_name'] . '</option>';
}
echo '</select>';

mysqli_close($conn);

Can anyone spot what I might be doing wrong? I’d really appreciate any help or tips to get this working. Thanks!

2

hey there! did u check if the query returns any rows? maybe echo mysqli_num_rows($query) to verify. also, check ur table name. what other debugging steps u tried? curious to know more!

3

yo liam! have u tried echoing out the $row values inside ur while loop? sometimes the data’s there but not showing up for weird reasons. also, double-check ur column names - ‘item_id’ and ‘item_name’ might be different in ur actual table. good luck!

4

I’ve encountered similar issues before, and one often overlooked aspect is data encoding. Make sure your database charset and collation match your WordPress settings. Also, verify that your ‘items’ table actually contains data. You can do this by running a simple SELECT query directly in MySQL Workbench.

Another potential issue could be user permissions. Ensure that the database user you’re connecting with has SELECT privileges on the ‘items’ table. If you’re still facing problems, try adding error reporting to your PHP script:

error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);

This will help identify any PHP errors that might be occurring. Lastly, check if your WordPress theme or any active plugins are interfering with your custom code. Sometimes, conflicts can arise that prevent proper execution.