在Dropdown中创建第一个值（' - select-'）为NULL

Question

We have a form with some optional values, which are contained in a dropdown list. When a new user opens the form, the default value on the dropdowns should be '-select-'. The value that the user picks gets sent to our database. This all works fine right now, except we do not have '-select-' listed as the first option, the default is instead the first option as listed in our database.

I am trying to add '-select-' but I receive a database error when I submit the form with '-select-' still chosen.

<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Pricing Profile: </label>
<div class="controls">
    <?php 
    echo form_dropdown('pricing_profile_id', $pricing_profiles, 
              $profile->pricing_profile_id,' class="span3" id="pricing_profile_id" ');
    ?>
</div>
</div>

I tried adding in this text above the "echo form_dropdown" but it does not seem to work:

array_unshift($pricing_profiles, array(0 => "-select-"));

Thanks

Answer 1

1. Have "select" as one of the chooses in your list
2. Have the value of select as "" (i.e. no value) for example: ( '' => 'Select' )
3. Run form validation on the form (which you should be doing anyway). Make the dropdown lists "required"
4. If the user does not select anything, the form validation fails, since they did not "select" something.