Are there any best practices for handling form submissions with pre-selected values in PHP?

When handling form submissions with pre-selected values in PHP, it's important to ensure that the pre-selected values are properly set in the form fields when the form is displayed and that they are retained when the form is submitted. One common approach is to use the ternary operator to check if the form field has a submitted value, and if not, use the pre-selected value. 

<?php
// Pre-selected value
$preselected_value = "Option 1";

// Check if form is submitted
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
    // Get submitted value
    $submitted_value = $_POST["select_field"];
} else {
    // Set pre-selected value if form is not submitted
    $submitted_value = $preselected_value;
}
?>

<form method="post">
    <select name="select_field">
        <option value="Option 1" <?php echo ($submitted_value == "Option 1") ? "selected" : ""; ?>>Option 1</option>
        <option value="Option 2" <?php echo ($submitted_value == "Option 2") ? "selected" : ""; ?>>Option 2</option>
        <option value="Option 3" <?php echo ($submitted_value == "Option 3") ? "selected" : ""; ?>>Option 3</option>
    </select>
    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

Keywords

form submissions pre-selected values PHP handling best practices

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