title: Dropdown Menu to Query Database
body: <p>First of I apologize if this is a dumb question - I'm just starting to pick up my php/mysql skills. I'm making a dropdown form with 3 dropdowns. I want to be able to trigger a query from the form. You select Part Type, Make, Model hit submit and a table of results is displayed. </p>
  
  <p>I have my form populated with 3 arrays and when you hit submit, I can echo the key of each selected item to the page: </p>
  
  <pre><code>    echo '&lt;form action="dbBrowse.php" method="post"&gt;';
  
      $mak = array (0 =&gt; 'Make', 'Ford', 'Freightliner', 'Peterbilt', 'Sterling', 'Mack', 'International', 'Kenworth', 'Volvo');
      $mod = array (0 =&gt; 'Model', 'Argosy', 'Midliner');
      $p = array (0 =&gt; 'Part', 'Radiator', 'Charge Air Cooler', 'AC');                        
  
  
  
      echo '&lt;select name="drop1"&gt;';
      foreach ($p as $key =&gt; $value) {
      echo "&lt;option value=\"$key\"&gt;
      $value&lt;/option&gt;\n";
  
      }
  
  
      echo '&lt;/select&gt;';
  
  
  
  
      echo '&lt;select name="drop2"&gt;';
      foreach ($mak as $key =&gt; $value) {
      echo "&lt;option value=\"$key\"&gt;
      $value&lt;/option&gt;\n";
  
  
  
      }
  
      echo '&lt;select/&gt;';
  
  
  
      echo '&lt;select name="drop3"&gt;';
      foreach ($mod as $key =&gt; $value)  {
      echo "&lt;option value=\"$key\"&gt;
      $value&lt;/option&gt;\n";
  
  
  
      }
  
      echo '&lt;select/&gt;';
      echo '&lt;/form&gt;';
  
  
              //echo keys of selection
      echo $_POST['drop1'];
      echo "&lt;br /&gt;";
      echo $_POST['drop2'];
      echo "&lt;br /&gt;";
      echo $_POST['drop3'];
              //these echo something like 1, 1, 3 etc. to my page
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Where I'm getting lost is I'm looking to take the selected options and insert them into a query something like this:        </p>
  
  <pre><code>     $dropSearch = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM parts WHERE part= "$partTypeVar" . AND  WHERE make = "$makeTypeVar" . AND WHERE model = "$modelTypeVar"');    
  
              $partTypeVar being the corresponding value to the key that is being returned from the array.        
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm driving myself crazy trying to figure out how to make that happen. Eventually I want to expand this further but just being able to create a mysql statement with the values selected would make my day right now. I understand the concept of what needs to happen but I'm unsure of how to accomplish it. Any help or pushes in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.          </p>