Collecting anonymous info

new7media

I am using PHP 4.0 and MySQL to do sort of a guest book application. I want to enable people to submit their answer to a specific question. There's more to it than the following, but here's the simplified problem.

The fields I'm requiring are:

first_name
last_name
other (eg., how would you describe yourself)
answer

I want to allow people to remain anonymous if they so choose. So I've included a radio button in my form where they can select to be anonymous (value="yes") or not (value="no").

If they choose to remain anonymous, I want to display only the "other" field and the "answer" field.

If they choose not to remain anonymous, I want to display all 4 fields.

I have tried every combination of the "if" conditional imaginable and I can't get this to work. Here's what I'm thinking SHOULD work. Any help with this is unfathomably appreciated!

<?php
--- connect to database ---

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table_name", $db);

while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
if ($anonymous == no) {
printf ("%s %s \n", $myrow["first_name"], $myrow["last_name"]);
}
printf ("%s\n", $myrow["other"]);
printf ("%s\n", $myrow["answer"]);
}
?>

Anon

you could just simplify it by only adding certain information in the database. ie. if they want to remain anonymous just add their answer/other into the database and if they dont then add all. or you way could work too. heres how to do it

//MYSQL_ASSOC returns only the associative array
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC){
//declaring the variables so you can just print them without using concatations
$anon = $row["anonymous"];
$fname = $row["f_name"];
$lname = $row["l_name"];
$other = $row["other"];
$answer = $row["answer"];

//test if they want to remain anonymous
if($anon=="true"){
print "$fname $lname \n";
}
print "$other \n";
print "$answer\n";
}

new7media

Thanks a lot Nephi! You taught me something new -- much appreciated.

Here's what I ultimately used to get done what I needed -- heavily based on what you gave me with a few tweaks:
<?php
-- connect to dbase --
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table_name", $db);

//You suggested using mysql_fetch_assoc. That worked as well as mysql_fetch_array.

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$anonymous = $row["anonymous"];
$first_name = $row["first_name"];
$last_name = $row["last_name"];
$other = $row["other"];
$answer = $row["answer"];

//To test for anonymity you used == true; that gave me weird results, so I just used == no.

if ($anonymous == 'no') {
print "$first_name $last_name \n";
}
print "$other \n";
print "$answer\n";
}
?>

By the way, is there a standard procedure for testing a variable? Eg.:

$variable == no
vs.
$variable == "no"
vs.
$variable == 'no'