HTML Dropdown Default value not setting

Question

I have a Dropdown that consists of two options. When I select an option the page reloads and using GET method I find out which value is selected. Then I try to make sure that the dropdown has the previously selected value and this is where things go wrong.

<?php echo $Status; ?>  <!-- the value passed in the URL(stored in the variable Status) gets correctly printed here -->
<select class="btn btn-primary" required name="Status" style="float:right" onchange="location = this.value">
      <option value="">Select Status</option>
          
      <option value="?pageno=1&Status='Active'"  <?php if($Status=='Active'){echo "selected";}?>>Active</option>
      
       <option value="?pageno=1&Status='Not Active'" <?php if($Status=='Not Active'){echo "selected";}?>>Not Active</option>
</select> 

The value gets printed correctly in the first line but for some reason, it isn't working in the options part. What am I doing wrong here? Can anyone clarify

Answer 1

The value of your URL parameter Status is either 'Active' or 'Not Active' - including those single quotes, they are part of the value that you are sending.

But what you are comparing it to, is just Active resp. Not Active:

if($Status=='Active')

The single quotes here are not part of the value that you are comparing $Status to - they are part of the PHP syntax. You would have to write something like

if($Status=="'Active'")

or

if($Status=='\'Active\'')

here, to properly compare the your variable with what it actually contains.

But that makes rather little sense to begin with - you should rather remove the single quotes from the parameter value you are sending.

<option value="?pageno=1&Status=Active"
<option value="?pageno=1&Status=Not+Active"

Note that I replaced the space with + here, to make this a properly URL encoded value.