Front end for editing drop down list items

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I think I am having an issue with terminology.

I have a situation where I have a database holding values in a table to be used in a select drop down in a web front end. Currently have a SQL Server database and using ColdFusion with JavaScript (mostly jQuery). To be honest I was surprised when I couldn't find a quick and easy jQuery solution to this.

I am looking for a way to offer an end user the ability to add to the list of values available in that drop down list.

Now I could manually build this, but I had the feeling that this is something that has been tackled before and sexier than I could write code must already exist. My searches however have been fruitless as I keep running into the very standard question of how to populate a front end select drop down with values from a table.

Can anyone point me towards a slick system of allowing an end user to update a list of values? Or if you know the terminology I need to be able to find this ability I'd be grateful.

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1 Answers

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It is a little unclear as to which of the following two questions you are asking:

1) How to build select options (a drop-down list0 with values from a table.

2) How to create an interface to manage values in a table.

These are two distinct problems to solve. I believe you are more interested in knowing the answer to question 2, how to create an interface for updating a table:

It really depends on what kind of experience you want your user to have... who is the person (people) who need to update this list of values? Do you need to have authentication (user/password) to manage the table?

A simple but not sexy solution is to give them access to a web data administrator program such as phpmyadmin (for mysql), or perhaps this one for SQL Server.

Other than that, you are really looking to create an application, so any framework or set of tools that lets you interface with the database of choice is good. A term to search for is "CRUD" which stands for Create Read Update Delete, typically associated with simple applications.

Try this search for simple crud application