How to store a select menu value in a variable

[PeekAtU]

Hello I am having an issue assigning a variable to a select box selection so that i can feed the variable back into future queries. Please see code below:

<select name="room" id="msg-room">
                        <?php
                        $query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM rooms ORDER BY ROOM asc");
                        while($data = mysql_fetch_assoc($query)) {
                        ?>
                        <option value="<?php echo $data["roomid"]; ?>"><?php echo $data["ROOM"]; ?></option>
                        <?php } ?>
                    </select>

The selection list loads and populates fine. I just need a way to assign $data["Room"] a variable so that I can insert it into the Heading of the page as well as back into a sql query that will return the number of users in a selected room.

<?php
        $query = mysql_query('SELECT * from user where room = $data[room] and account_status=1')
            or
die(mysql_error());
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($query);
echo "$num_rows Users Online" 

Please help. Thank you

[lyodmichael]

good day, use the [/code][//code] next time to show the code :) . by the way, you can use id to label the value.

[PeekAtU]

The select box has an id=msg-room. How would I display the currently selected value as another page's heading?

[Rabbit]

If it's part of the the form that gets submitted, it will be in the POST or GET data. You can then use the $_POST or $_GET arrays to access the data that was passed.

[PeekAtU]

Thank you. Im sure that should make sense to someone more experienced but I am still not quite clear. Below is another portion of the code that monitors the selection in #msg-room. The portion of code does work because I am able to change rooms successfully. Im just having the toughest time trying to pass the selection on as a variable. I hope Im making sense. The site was (partially) built for me by a developer I hired and has now vanished so I am trying to familiarize myself with this code.

<script type="text/javascript">
 $('#msg-room').change(function() {
            change_room();
            getChatText();
        });
 
        function change_room() {
            var room = $('#msg-room :selected').text();
            $('#current_room').html(room);
                $('#ajax').load('ajax.php?type=change_room&room=' + escape(room) + '', function() {
                $('#chatbox-0').append($('#ajax').html());
                $('.newpost').fadeIn(300, function() {
                    $(this).removeClass('newpost');        
                });    
                chat_div.scrollTop = chat_div.scrollHeight;                        
            });    
        }
        change_room();

[Rabbit]

The first thing to do when trying to understand code is to learn the basics. You should start with a tutorial, like this one. In the tutorial, it also shows you how to pass and retrieve values between pages.