将PHP变量设置为用户选择的下拉表单的值

I'm trying to create a form with text fields and dropdowns. With the text fields, I'm using this code:

<label for="name">Name</label>
<input type="text" id="name" name="name" value="<?php echo $user->name;?>" style="width:95%;"/>

The form then checks if the user has filled out the "name" field with this:

$name = $input->get('name', null);
if($name == null)
    return false;

This works fine for the multiple text fields that the form uses, but I don't know how to check for the user input on the dropdowns. How can I send the option selected by the user, similar to the way I did it with the text field, so that I can check to make sure the user selected something? Example:

<label for="department">Department</label>
<select name="department" form="quickcontact_frm">
    <option value="default">Select </option>
    <option value="1"><?php echo $params->get('department1');?></option>
    <option value="2"><?php echo $params->get('department2');?></option>
    <option value="3"><?php echo $params->get('department3');?></option>
    <option value="4"><?php echo $params->get('department4');?></option>
    <option value="5"><?php echo $params->get('department5');?></option>
    <option value="6"><?php echo $params->get('department6');?></option>
    <option value="7"><?php echo $params->get('department7');?></option>
    <option value="8"><?php echo $params->get('department8');?></option>
</select>

$department1 = $input->get('department1', null);
$department2 = $input->get('department2', null);
Etc........

This is set up the exact same way as the text fields as far as I know, but doesn't work and seems like a bad way to do it anyways.

And if you want to a "pre selected" option use "selected" in the option you want:

<select name="department" form="quickcontact_frm">
    <option value="default">Select </option>
    <option value="1"><?php echo $params->get('department1');?></option>
    <option value="2"><?php echo $params->get('department2');?></option>
    <option value="3"><?php echo $params->get('department3');?></option>
    <option value="4" selected><?php echo $params->get('department4');?></option>
    <option value="5"><?php echo $params->get('department5');?></option>
    <option value="6"><?php echo $params->get('department6');?></option>
    <option value="7"><?php echo $params->get('department7');?></option>
    <option value="8"><?php echo $params->get('department8');?></option>
</select>

As explained by W3CSchools.

if you want to verify and pre-select one option you should do something like this:

<option value="6" <?php if($params->get('department6')==true){ echo 'selected'; } ?>><?php echo $params->get('department6');?></option>

First of all, instead of having 8 lines like that for your departments, you could use a for loop.

<select name="department" form="quickcontact_frm">
    <option value="default">Select </option>
    <?php for($i=1; $i<=8; $i++): ?>
        <option value="<?php echo $i; ?>"><?php echo $params->get('department' . $i);?></option>
    <?php endfor; ?>
</select>

Now, inside your for loop, you can add a check if the $input->get is true.

<?php if($input->get('department' . $i, null)) echo 'selected'; ?>

So if you mix both together, the result would be

<select name="department" form="quickcontact_frm">
    <option value="default">Select </option>
    <?php for($i=1; $i<=8; $i++): ?>
        <option value="<?php echo $i; ?>" <?php if($input->get('department' . $i, null)) echo 'selected'; ?>><?php echo $params->get('department' . $i);?></option>
    <?php endfor; ?>
</select>