this one...Need help on a jsp

Question

is there a way to grab the selected value from a "drop-down menu' and use it in a query statement?
here's my code:
<label for="weatherStat">State:</label>
<select name="weatherStat" id="States">
<%          
               try {
               Connection connection = DataBaseConnectionManager.getConnection();
               String sqlQuery = "SELECT  state FROM ols_weather_cities GROUP BY state ORDER BY state";
               ResultSet rst2;
               PreparedStatement pstmt;
               String theStates;
               pstmt = connection.prepareStatement(sqlQuery);
               rst2 = pstmt.executeQuery(sqlQuery);
               while (rst2.next ()) {
                    theStates = rst2.getString("state");
                    out.println("<OPTION VALUE=\"" + theStates + "\">" + theStates + "</OPTION>");
               rst2.close();
            pstmt.close();
          catch (Exception e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
     %>
</select>          
</TD></TR>
</center>
<TR><TD>
<br>
<br>
<center>
<label for="weatherCity">City:</label>
                         <select name="weatherCity" id="Cities">
                         <%     
               try {
               Connection connection = DataBaseConnectionManager.getConnection();
               String sqlQuery = "SELECT city FROM ols_weather_cities WHERE state = 'name' ORDER BY city";
               ResultSet rst3;
               PreparedStatement pstmt;
               String theCities;
               pstmt = connection.prepareStatement(sqlQuery);
               rst3 = pstmt.executeQuery(sqlQuery);
               while (rst3.next ()) {
                    theCities = rst3.getString("city");
                    out.println("<OPTION VALUE=\"" + theCities + "\">" + theCities + "</OPTION>");
               rst3.close();
            pstmt.close();
          catch (Exception e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
     %>
</select></TD></TR>
</TABLE>thanx

Answer 1

Yuck. I'd say that such code shouldn't exist in a JSP, but I have to say that such code shouldn't exist at all.
And maybe you should try and learn what JSPs really are and how they work. Trying to combine HTML with JSP is foolish - at the time the HTML exists on the client, the JSP instance on the server might be long gone. You need to submit a form - best to a servlet - like you always do.