[thelist] updating cascading 'select' form elements from a database

[Diane Soini]

On Wednesday, August 11, 2004, at 04:53 PM, 
thelist-request at lists.evolt.org wrote:
>
> For example, select1 can have 10 choices. The values in select2 should
> be selected from the db table based on the current value of select1, 
> and
> update as it is changed. The values in select3 should be selected from
> the db table based on the current value of select2, and should update 
> as
> it is changed.
>
> I have vague thoughts about gathering all the data for all possible
> variations (probably 15 choices available for any of the selects, since
> most choices in select1 will have zero or one choice in select2; same
> for select2 -> select3) to create arrays and doing some gnarly
> JavaScript with those arrays to populate the selects on the fly.
>
> Is there an easier way?
>
What about using javascript and XML. Let's you make a trip to the 
server (for the XML file) without refreshing the HTML on the client 
side. Works in many modern browsers but not all, though.