using checkboxes for personalizing pages

[Anon]

Hi,

Someone please get me out of this situation!
I am trying to introduce personalization on my web page. What I want to do is -

1. Register a user and store his uid, username and password in a table called user and set a cookie for uid.

2. After that he should be taken to a page called personalized.php where he sees 5 links on the navigation bar printed in the form of a neat table. Now, I want to give him an edit option wherein he can go to a page called editpersonal.php where he will find these choices already checked in the checkboxes. Now he can uncheck whatever he wants and when he submits he shld be taken back to the personal page and now the page shld display only his selected choices. Meanwhile all this info shld be stored in a table called userinfo which will have 2 fields uid and uchoice. uid will have references from the uid in the user table.

The logic is absolutely clear to me. The only thing that is bothering me is that when the user registers and is taken to the personalized page automatically the uid and 'all' choices shld be entered in the userinfo table cos intially I am displaying all the 5 links. But, then when he goes and edits them the table shld get updated.

I will definitely remember that person thruout my life who bails me out of this situation. I need an example otherwise I'll still be stuck. So this is a request to all u geniouses out there plzz help me with this cos stroing checkbox data in a database is another pain.

Thanks,
Mandy.

[Anon]

Well..

I'm very sorry to say but I can't see your problem. What you describe is logic and clear to me, but I'm not sure what your problem is exactly?

Which part doesn't work? Putting checkbox information in a database is very simple, create (for instance) a row called "article_yn" and make it varchar(1). Put in "y" or put in "n".

If someone checks a checkbox, the value is set to "on" e.g.

<input type="checkbox" name="test" />

If someone checks it, and submits the form, on the next page you can retrieve the value for $test which is "on".

So you can say:

if ( $test ) {
$field_yn = "j";
} else {
$field_yn = "n";
}

Now, if you would retrieve field_yn from a database you could use:

<input type="checkbox" <? echo $check ?> name="test" />

Before this line you use:

if ( $field_yn == "j" ) {
$check = "checked";
} else {
$check = "";
}

That's just the basics for checkboxes, perhaps not so complex as it can be, e.g. you could store your checkbox in your database as "tinyint" and simply put in 1 or 0 (1 = true, 0 = false)

But perhaps that's not what you wanted to know, so if it's not, please be more clear ;-)