Having <? within an echo statement

Hello,

Am fairly new to PHP and am stuck right now. I have a user update profile form with a select box for the user's state. I call a function to grab the states and build them into options for a select box.

When not dealing with many entries, in the past I have not used the function and used something along the lines of:

<option value="0" <?php if ($_SESSSION['service']['fax'] == "0") echo ' selected="selected"'; ?> >0</option>

Code (markup):

However, as I am not that good yet at escaping with PHP I am having a bear of a time implementing it within the function. Here is the function and you can see what I am trying to do:

function buildStates() {

       $sql = "SELECT * from states;";
	$result = dbQuery($sql) or die('Cannot get Parts. ' . mysql_error());


	while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
		$state = $row['state_abbr'];
		echo "<option value=\"$state\" <?php if ({$_SESSION[user][state]} = $state) echo ' selected="selected"'; ?> >$state</option>\n";
	
	}
}

Code (markup):

I have tried every escape combination that would make sense to me, but I always get the unexpected T_STRING error.

Thanks for any suggestions...

 

Try this:

<?php
$state = $row['state_abbr'];
echo "<option value=\"$state\" "; if ($_SESSION[user][state]==$state){echo "selected=\"selected\">$state</option>";}
?>

 

Oh.. unless user and state are constants, you will need to change the way you're indexing $_Session.
I assume they are variables so.. should be
$_Session[$user][$state]

 

Thanks caffeinefree, worked like a champ. Dah!! Feel like a moron. My final use was this:

echo "<option value=\"$state\" "; if ($_SESSION['user']['state']==$state){echo "selected=\"selected\"";}echo ">$state</option>";

Code (markup):

 

Nice - seomtimes it's too easy to overlook