How to use selected value in Html::dropDownList with optgroups?

Yii 2.0 General Discussions
1

Hi, I’m trying to select a specific value with Html::dropDownList which uses optgroup. I’m able to create the dropdown html just fine using a nested array but how do I select one of the choices? What do I use as the $selection value?

Thank you!

2

Hi @littlebob,

Could you show us your code to render the dropDownList?

Basically, you are to set the value (not the label) of the selected option to the $selection. There’s no difference regarding this whether your dropDownList is grouped or not.

3

Here is the line of code that I’m currently using. If leave the selection blank, it all works fine, but as soon as I try to select a specific value, I can’t get it to work.

    echo Html::dropDownList(
    	'criteria',
    	['Page 1']['107141'],
    	[
    	    'Page 1' => [
    		'107145' => 'Q1: some text',
    		'107141' => 'Q9: some text',
    		'107142' => 'Q10:  some text',
    		'107143' => 'Q11:  some text',
    		'107164' => 'Q14: some text',
    	    ],
    	    'Page 2' => [
    		'107195' => 'some text',
    	    ],
    	],
    	[
    		'prompt' => [
    			'text' => 'Choose criteria',
    			'options' => []
    		],
    		'id' => 'criteriaSelector',
    		'class' => 'criteriaSelector',
    		'required' => 'required',
    	]
    );

Here is the Yii documentation for the dropdownlist but I can’t figure out what to do next:
https://www.yiiframework.com/doc/api/2.0/yii-helpers-basehtml#dropDownList()-detail

Thank you!

4

Try this instead.

   echo Html::dropDownList(
    	'criteria',
    	// ['Page 1']['107141'],
       '107141',
    	[
    	    'Page 1' => [
    		'107145' => 'Q1: some text',
    		'107141' => 'Q9: some text',
    		'107142' => 'Q10:  some text',
    		'107143' => 'Q11:  some text',
    		'107164' => 'Q14: some text',
    	    ],
    	    'Page 2' => [
    		'107195' => 'some text',
    	    ],
    	],
5

Yes, that solved the problem. For some reason I kept thinking that the the selection needed to be an array element but, of course, since the dropdown option name has to be unique, the selection only needs to be a string.