Help with checkbox/multiple data

[Anon]

I am developing a site where certain items might fall under more than one catagory. When they are inputing their data, they will have a choice <select multiple></select> box so they can choose more than one catagory.

How would a database (Access) store that and how can I retrieve that data when someone says "Show me all the stuff in catagory A" since I will have multiple catagories.

See what I mean? Same thing with checkboxes - when they check the box, how does that get stored in a database and how do you retrieve it?

Thanks,

Seth

[bfinucan]

Hello,
Form elements such as multiple selects, and arrays of checkboxes or radio buttons are passed through as variables. To read them into your database, you would loop through the array of values and put them in the proper field of your DB. You may need to place [] hard brackets (name="stuff[]") on your element names to get them to pass all items correctly. If you run a loop and only get the last selected option to show, then try the brackets at the end of the name.

Calling these items is very easy in php as all form elements become immediately accessible (after form submittal) as php variables. So a multiple select box like this:

<select name="stuff" size="5" multiple>
<option value=1>One</option>
<option value=2>Two</option>
...
</select>

Could have all its values printed out (after the form has been submitted) with a loop like this:

foreach ($stuff AS $thing) {
echo $thing . "<br>";
} //endforeach

You can see how easy it will be to place your DB insert statements inside such a loop to get these values into your DB.