My developer quit (by my choice ) and I now have to clean up some code. I'm not an expert at cleaning up others code so I need your help. The following code creates multiple select boxes based on the "foreach ($skillChapters as $skillChapter)", one for each database record. I need to remove the multiple boxes option and replace with just the first database record in the table "skillchapters" with record "1". I can remove the "foreach ($skillChapters as $skillChapter)" and it only shows one box but I don't know how to specify the database record I need to show in the box. Here is the code:


echo $form->create( 'Job', array( 'action' => 'index' ) )."\n";
echo "<div class=\"row\"><label>Skills</label>";
foreach ($skillChapters as $skillChapter)
{
$currid = $skillChapter['SkillChapter']['id'];
echo "<div class=\"selectSkill\">";
echo "<div class=\"floatLeft\" onclick=\"showHide('showchapter".$currid."', 'showRightMinus".$currid."', 'showRightPlus".$currid."')\">".$skillChapter['SkillChapter']['title']."</div>";
echo "<div class=\"floatRight\" onclick=\"showHide('showchapter".$currid."', 'showRightMinus".$currid."', 'showRightPlus".$currid."')\">";
echo "<span class=\"showElement\" id=\"showRightPlus".$currid."\">+</span><span class=\"hideElement\" id=\"showRightMinus".$currid."\">(close)</span>";
echo "</div>";

$skillCategories = $skillChapter['SkillCategory'];
echo "<div class=\"hideSkillBox\" id=\"showchapter".$currid."\">";
$iteration =0;
$skilIds = array();
foreach ($skillCategories as $idx=>$skillCategory)
{

echo (($idx !=0) && ($idx%3 ==0) ) ? '<hr>' : '';
// $clear = (($idx ==0) || ($idx%3 ==0) ) ? 'floatClear' : '';
// echo "<div class=\"skillset $clear\">";
echo "<div class=\"skillset\">";

echo "<div class=\"skillCategory\">";
echo $skillCategory['title'];
echo "</div>";
$skills = $skillCategory['Skill'];
foreach ($skills as $skill)
{
$skillid = $skill['id'];
$skillIds[] = array("skill".$skill['id'],$skill['title'],$skillChapter['SkillChapter']['title']);

echo "<div class=\"skillRow\">";
echo "<input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"data[Job][skill".$skillid."]\" value=\"1\" id=\"skill".$skillid."\"> ";
echo "<label for=\"skill".$skillid."\">{$skill['title']}</label>";
echo "</div>";
}
echo "</div>";

$iteration++;
}
echo "</div>";
echo "</div>";

foreach ($things as $thing)
{
<block>
}

means "Do <block> lots of times, with $thing taking all of the values in the array $things in turn.

So if you want to do <block> once, first set $thing to the single thing you want to do it for, and thus write:

$thing = <whatever>
<block>


You haven't shown us where the $things are retrieved from the database, so I can't guess how to do it. What DB are you using anyway?

its retrieving data from Mysql database. Can i just replace the foreach clause with a fixed value?

Please read my answer again for your second question. ("foreach" isn't a 'clause' in any useful sense. ... what I wrote) You do understand what { ... } means, right?


The vulgar and disgusting thing to do is just to write

break;

inside the end of the foreach loop, so it loops once then stops.

The proper thing to do is to see where the array skillChapters is coming from, and selec the one you want, or change the mysql_query() call to extract a single record only. You may find this fragment helpful:

echo "<p><pre>"; print_r($skillChapters); echo "</pre>";

This will dump the contents of the array so you can see what's going on.

HTH

Dude... your suggestions worked! I just may have to drop you a couple bucks! Do you by chance have any suggestions on a CSS hack to make a scroll drop down work in IE 6? I'm pulling my hair out for days. Nothing I have tried has worked. Works in IE 7 and FF3. Here is the CSS:

.showSkillBox {
max-height:300px;
display:default;
border:1px solid #A7A6AA;
position: absolute;
background: #fff;
margin:17px 0 0 -4px;
width:400px;
background-color: #fff;
overflow: auto;
}

IE6 doesn't support "max-height", try "height" instead. Also there's no value "default" for the "display" property, and there's a duplicate "background" property.

Perfect. Thanks so much!