multiple select problem

Anon

Hello,

I'm developing with PHP3. Let's say I have an HTML form with a multiple select list and its name is selectlist. Let's say I selected 3 of them and submit the form. The querystring would look something like this:

?selectlist=value1&selectlist=value2&selectlist=value3. On the other side, I'd expect to have an array called $selectlist with each of the values in it as in:

$selectlist[0] = "value1"
$selectlist[1] = "value2"
$selectlist[2] = "value3"

I was disappointed to find that this doesn't happen. Instead, the form variable is a scalar and the last value in the querystring is taken. How can I do that? Has anyone discovered a workaround to this limitation. Thanks in advance for any help

-Yanxue

Anon

NOTE: please not the [] after the name "sel_array".. this converts sel_array into an array.

Anon

Hey thanks for the answer to this topic K.!
It worked perfectly. You can use

foreach($sel_array as $x)
{
do something to each element of the array
}

to parse through each array element and do something with each item that was selected.

Anon

The sel_array[] works perfectly in PHP, but
I'm affraid javascript doesn't know that declaration, so you can't use client-side validation of form.
Have you any ideas how to solve it ?

Anon

I'm also trying to get <select MULTIPLE...> to work.

This is what I have so far:

<select MULTIPLE name=layers[]>
<option value=snotel>
<option value=cities>
....etc (more values listed)
</select>

The following line prints out the correct size of the array, in other words, if I select 5, it says the array size is 5:

printf("size of HTTP layers is %s<br>",
sizeof($HTTP_FORM_VARS['layers']));

and this prints out "Array":

printf("layers is %s<br>",
$HTTP_FORM_VARS['layers']);

...so, I know it is passing the layers[] array correctly, because it always knows the size of it, but I can't figure out how to access the elements!!!????

When I try to print $HTTP_FORM_VARS['layers[0]'] or $layers[0] (suggested in another thread), I get nothing! Any suggestions?

-zibworm

Anon

I have tried to resolve multi select problem :
The sel_array[] works perfectly in PHP, and if you want to use javascript validation you should use this.form.elements[n].options[k].value and this.form.elements[n].options[k].slected declaration, where 'n' is order of SELECT MULTIPLE in whole form and 'k' is order of OPTION in SELECT MULTIPLE.
It works, guys !

to zibwurm:
$layers[0] has to work ! Try once more and try first in the same document.

Anon

Finally got this to work! Thanks everyone for your help. (BTW, I'm using PHP3. Can't update to 4 yet because of a conflict with another module I'm using.) Here is my code:

<?php
$mylayers = $HTTP_POST_VARS['layers'];
$size = count($HTTP_POST_VARS['layers']);
if (($size) > 0) {
for ($thelayer = 0;
$thelayer<$size; $thelayer++) {
$curlayer = $mylayers[$thelayer];
if ($curlayer) {
echo $curlayer;
//etc....
}
}
}
?>

P.S. It was a little awkward formating this after I pasted it in, so my apologies if there are errors in the code. I tried to check over it.

Anon

I hope one of you can see what the heck is wrong with my code.

I was attempting to have a multiple select box and I know that you can use [] on the select name to convert to an array.

But when I submit the info, for some reason I can't figure out, I can't get anything from the variable using a for loop.

Right now I am just trying to print out the array on the same page just so I can see if it is working.

Here is the code....

<?php
if ($submit) {
for ($i=0; $i < sizeof($users[]); $i++) {
print "$users";
}
}
<form name="get_users" method = get action = getusers.phtml>
<select name="users[]" multiple size=10>
then all my users are listed here.
</select>
</form>
?>

Any advice anyone?

HRom wrote:

The sel_array[] works perfectly in PHP, but
I'm affraid javascript doesn't know that declaration, so you can't use client-side validation of form.
Have you any ideas how to solve it ?

Anon

This is from the php.net manual FAQ: It tells you how to have your cake and eat it too. You can name multiselect boxes with the brackets [] and refer to them in javascript without js getting confused by the []s...
How do I get all the results from a SELECT MULTIPLE HTML tag?
The SELECT MULTIPLE tag in an HTML construct allows users to select multiple items from a list. These items are then passed to the action handler for the form. The problem is that they are all passed with the same widget name. ie.
<SELECT NAME="var" MULTIPLE>
Each selected option will arrive at the action handler as:
var=option1
var=option2
var=option3
Each option will overwrite the contents of the previous $var variable. The solution is to use PHP's non-indexed array feature. The following should be used:
<SELECT NAME="var[]" MULTIPLE>
This tells PHP to treat var as an array and each assignment of a value to var[] adds an item to the array. The first item becomes $var[0], the next $var[1], etc. The count() function can be used to determine how many options were selected, and the sort() function can be used to sort the option array if necessary.
Note that if you are using JavaScript the [] on the element name might cause you problems when you try to refer to the element by name. Use it's numerical form element id instead, or enclose the variable name in single quotes and use that as the index to the elements array, for example:

variable = documents.forms[0].elements['var[]'];