Can an option in SELECT tag carry multiple values?

Question

Hi all,

I got a select tag with some options in a HTML form:
(the data will be collected and processed using PHP)

Testing:

<SELECT NAME="Testing">  
  <OPTION VALUE="1"> One  
  <OPTION VALUE="2"> Two  
  <OPTION VALUE="3"> Three
</SELECT>

Is it possible for an option to carry multiple values like when a user selects "One", then a few other values related to this option will be written to the Database.

How should I design the SELECT Tag so that each of the options can carry one than one value like this:

<SELECT NAME="Testing">  
  <OPTION VALUE="1" value="2010"> One  
  <OPTION VALUE="2" value="2122"> Two  
  <OPTION VALUE="3" value="0"> Three
</SELECT>

Answer 1

one option is to put multi value with comma seperated

like

value ="123,1234"

and in the server side separate them

Answer 2

One way to do this, first one an array, 2nd an object:

    <select name="">
        <option value="[0,1,2,3]">Option one</option>
        <option value="{foo:'bar',one:'two'}">Option two</option>
    </select>

Answer 3

Duplicate tag parameters are not allowed in HTML. What you could do, is VALUE="1,2010". But you would have to parse the value on the server.

Answer 4

If you're goal is to write this information to the database, then why do you need to have a primary value and 'related' values in the value attribute? Why not just send the primary value to the database and let the relational nature of the database take care of the rest.

If you need to have multiple values in your OPTIONs, try a delimiter that isn't very common:

<OPTION VALUE="1|2010">One</OPTION>

...

or add an object literal (JSON format):

<OPTION VALUE="{'primary':'1','secondary':'2010'}">One</OPTION>

...

It really depends on what you're trying to do.

Answer 5

put values for each options like

<SELECT NAME="val">
   <OPTION VALUE="1" value="1:2:3:4"> 1-4  
   <OPTION VALUE="2" value="5:6:7:8"> 5-8  
   <OPTION VALUE="3" value="9:10:11:12"> 9-12
</SELECT>

at server side in case of php, use functions like explode [array] = explode([delimeter],[posted value]);

$values = explode(':',$_POST['val']

the above code return an array have only the numbers and the ':' get removed