textarea problems

Anon

I am totally lost on how to work with data from a text area. I have tried tons of my own code, and scoured these forums, but I can't find the answer to my problem. Let me outline what I want to do.

user types a list of domain names in a text area, one domain name per line and submits the form
php breaks the input apart and creates an array of the domain names (domain name = one line in text area)

After the form was submitted and I run an explode() (or something else) the different domain names could be referenced with $domain[0], $domain[1], $domain[2], etc.

How can I do this?

junebug

okay, your textarea comes into your script as a string. the domain names will be seperated by newline characters (\n). so, to get them into an array, you will want to implode the string:

$domains = implode("\n", $textarea);

$textarea is the variable name of the information passed from the form. $domains will be your array.

it would also be a good idea to cut off any whitespace that may have been entered with trim().

http://www.php.net/implode
http://www.php.net/explode
http://www.php.net/trim

Anon

I believe he would need to use the explode function rather than the implode function... implode is used for joining elements in an array:

implode -- Join array elements with a string
Description
string implode (string glue, array pieces)

Explode is used for splitting a string by a seperator:

explode -- Split a string by string
array explode (string separator, string string [, int limit])

Instead of
$domains = implode("\n", $textarea);
you'll want to use
$domains = explode("\n", $textarea);

However, if you want to get the domain names back into the textbox, you would use implode.