How can developers effectively debug PHP code that involves fetching and displaying database values in HTML elements like dropdowns?

Issue: Developers can effectively debug PHP code that involves fetching and displaying database values in HTML elements like dropdowns by using var_dump() or print_r() functions to check the fetched data, ensuring the database connection is established correctly, and validating the SQL query used to fetch the data. 

// Establish a database connection
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Fetch data from database
$sql = "SELECT id, name FROM table";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    // Output data in a dropdown
    echo "<select>";
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "<option value='" . $row['id'] . "'>" . $row['name'] . "</option>";
    }
    echo "</select>";
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

// Close database connection
$conn->close();

Keywords

PHP debugging database HTML elements dropdowns

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