Using radio buttons to select item

[Anon]

I am completely new to PHP and this is driving me nuts.

I have a page which displays a list of items in a table. Each item ID has a radio button after it. After the user selects an item, they click either an 'Update this item' or a 'Delete this item' button which takes them to an edit screen with the selected item displayed, or a deletion confirm, which displays all the fields associated with the ID and asks them to confirm the delete.

I am having problems getting the ID number to associate with the radio button and then pass itself on to the next screen. I had first done this with Delete and Update submit buttons after each item, passing the ID to a Javascript function, and it worked perfectly but looked ugly. I thought the radio button would work the same way as far as bringing along the ID number associated with the table row, but apparently not.

Any suggestions most appreciated!

Sheila

[Anon]

would something like this not work,

assuming you had an id field (ids) and then an associated name(idName):

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
?>

<INPUT TYPE='radio' NAME='id' VALUE='<? echo $row["id"] ; ?>'> <? echo $row["name"] ; ?><BR>

<?
} // end while loop

so whichever radio button is selected - the id for that value will be passed?

[fandelem]

let's say you have IDs 1,2, and 3

<input type="radio" name="id" value="1"> ID #1
<input type="radio" name="id" value="2"> ID #2
<input type="radio" name="id" value="2"> ID #3
<br>
<input type="radio" name="action" value="edit"> edit ID
<input type="radio" name="action" value="delete"> delete ID

okay.. when the user clicks submit, these values (that are selected) get passed to the ACTION in your form tag.

if you had your form tag as:
<form ACTION="decide.php" method="post">

then if i click on ID#2 and edit, a variable $id with the value of 2 will be passed to decide.php along with a variable $action with a value of "edit"

in decide.php, if you wanted to check, you could, by:

if ( $action == "edit" ) {
echo "id #$id is going to be edited";
} else if ( $action == "delete" ) {
echo "id #$id is going to be deleted";
}

and if you want to confirm deletion, you can do it in PHP, but i recommend just checking in javascript (search about.com for javascript form tutorials) -- that way it keeps it client side -- which makes it much faster. however the downside is if they don't have javascript enabled. your choice.

if you do go the PHP direction, you simply bring them to another page that says:
<form action="decide2.php" method="post">
are you sure you want to delete id #$id?
<input type="submit" value="yes">
<input type="hidden" name="id" value="$id">
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="$action">
</form>

and then by using hidden tags the user doesn't visibly see them, but they still get passed into your next script (accessible by $id and $action respectively)

hope any of this could help,

~kyle