Form Formatting Help

[Anon]

Well, as many of you may know, I have been working on an Employment form for Bates College. If you go to it: www.bates.edu/~rkolbe/ms_ver/index_ms.php, you will see the days of the week at the bottom along with different work times. This is so that the person that applies, will let us know when they are avaliable to work. Now, each check box has something like this:

value=Monday_8am name=Monday_8am

And that is for each check box (different times and days). Now what I want to do is have the script e-mail an address at the end (once the form is all completed). And in doing so, I want the different times to be shown. I have something like this:

$message .= "$Monday_7am\n";
$message .= "$Monday_8am\n";
$message .= "$Monday_9am\n";
$message .= "$Monday_10am\n";
$message .= "$Monday_11am\n";
$message .= "$Monday_12pm\n";
$message .= "$Monday_1pm\n";
$message .= "$Monday_2pm\n";
$message .= "$Monday_3pm\n";
$message .= "$Monday_4pm\n";
$message .= "$Monday_5pm\n";
$message .= "$Monday_6pm\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_7am\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_8am\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_9am\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_10am\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_11am\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_12pm\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_1pm\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_2pm\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_3pm\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_4pm\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_5pm\n";
$message .= "$Tuesday_6pm\n";

That is just some of it, it will only show the day and time if the user checked the box in the form. But when I recieve the e-mail, if say, Tuesday_4am is was not selected, there will be a space there, how would I go about doing this is some good PHP scripting?

[Anon]

if(!isset($Tuesday_7am)) {
// Tuesday_7am was not checked
$Tuesday_7am = "Not tuesday at 7 am !";
}

If it is a form, I would suggest you this :

if(!isset($POST["Tuesday_7am"])) {
// Tuesday_7am was not checked
$POST["Tuesday_7am"] = "Not tuesday at 7 am !";
}

[Anon]

ok, thats one way, and i got a few questions. what does $_POST represent? Does that pull info from the form? I thought it would be possible to just create one section of code that would prase all of the days and such if I put them in an array....would it be possible? Im not too familiar to arrays (im a n00bie to that).

[Anon]

Any variable submitted by a form, since PHP 4.1.0, are stored in $POST if request method is POST, and in $GET if request method is GET.

How does an array works ?? With indexes and values.
Let's create a simple array...
$my_array = array("lalala", "lelele", "lilili");

In this example :
$my_array[0] = "lalala"
$my_array[1] = "lelele"
$my_array[2] = "lilili"

"0", "1" and "2" are indexes, "lalala", "lelele", "lilili" are values. When you use this method, always remember that the first value is index 0, second value is index 1, etc.

You also can make an array like this :

$my_array = array("a" => "lalala",
"b" => "lelele",
"c" => "lilili");

In this example :

In this example :
$my_array["a"] = "lalala"
$my_array["b"] = "lelele"
$my_array["c"] = "lilili"

To make exactly the same thing, you could have written :

$my_array = array();

$my_array["a"] = "lalala";
$my_array["b"] = "lelele";
$my_array["c"] = "lilili";

You also can put arrays in arrays...

$my_array = array("a" => "lalala",
"b" => array("val0", "val1", "val2"),
"c" => "lilili");

Would produce :

$my_array["a"] = "lalala"
$my_array["b"][0] = "val0"
$my_array["b"][1] = "val1"
$my_array["b"][2] = "val2"
$my_array["c"] = "lilili"

To count the number of elements in an array, use count() or sizeof().

But you can use the extract() function to takes indexes and make "normal" variables with their values... Example :

$my_array = array("a" => "lalala",
"b" => "lelele",
"c" => "lilili");

extract($my_array);

Would produce :
$a = "lalala"
$b = "lelele"
$c = "lilili"

So, if you absolutely want to have "normal" variables with POST datas, use extract($_POST).

For arrays, see http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.array.php

I REALLY REALLY REALLY recommend you to read about arrays. You should be able to manipulate them. When you'll understand them, you'll can stop using them !!!

I hope this helped you ! If you have any question, don't be shy, email-me !