HELP: form with multiple text input boxes

madhatter

Heya all...

Can anyone help out...

Basically I have a form with multiple text input boxes. The number of these increases...so the next <tr> would have name2,comment2,date2,time2,id2 then the next sequence is 3...and so on.

So when the data is posted it's stored in the array $HTTP_POST_VARS. What I would need to do is somehow create a function that would foreach
nameX commentX dateX timeX do a mysql query:
UPDATE comments SET name='$username', comment='$comment',date='$date', time='$time' where id=$id".

I've managed to post the variables into POST VARS array and can view them using list/each as follows:

while (list($key, $value) = each ($HTTP_POST_VARS)) {

But I'm unsure how to extract the data to build up sql statements. I'm guessing that I'll need to loop through the array build up a sql statement per sequence. But since list and each just return ALL the values per key. I don't know how to seperate the variable per sequence sets!! I'm probably not approaching the data extraction properly.

Someone suggested another method to appending a number to each item. They suggested using an array per text input e.g.

<input type="text" name="name[]"..

This seems to create an array within $HTTP_POST_VARS. But I'm unable to access anything within that array.. I tried accessing it by $HTTP_POST_VARS[name]. But it returns nothing ???

Any pointer on how I should approach this problem. I seached every page on $HTTP_POST_VARS, arrays and text inputs. Everyone talks about submitting forms with only one set of text inputs. But I can find nothing on submitting multiple text inputs

Thanks in advance for any help..

Ta,
Tay "MadHatter" Jones

jmcneese

it's:

$_POST['name']['i']

Weedpacket

Originally posted by jmcneese
it's:
$_POST['name']['i']
[/B]

I think you mean

$_POST['name'][$i]

madhatter

thanks for the info... But your response makes no sense to me...

I guess your referring to the array within POST VARS ???

Would I need to do sommat like this:

while (list ($key, $val) = each ($formvars)) {
$i=0;
echo $formvars['name']['$i'];
++$i;
}

I'm very new to php..

Cheers

Weedpacket

Originally posted by madhatter
thanks for the info... But your response makes no sense to me... I'm very new to php..

Cheers

Where you've got

$HTTP_POST_VARS[name][i]

use

$_POST['name'][$i]

jmcneese

re-read http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.array.php, specifically the section about multi-dimensional arrays. in essence, what you have is an array in an array, namely the 'name[]' array you created, held within the $_POST global array.

so: $POST['name_of_your_form_array']['position_of_array'] or $POST['name'][1] for the first form element referenced by 'name[]'

Weedpacket

Originally posted by madhatter

Would I need to do sommat like this:

elided

I'm very new to php..

Cheers

foreach($_POST['name'] as $val)
{ echo $val;
}

$_POST is an array containing all your form-posted variables.

$_POST['name'] is an array contining all the values from the form fields called 'name[]'

$_POST['name'][$i] is the ith such value (counting from 0.).

$HTTP_POST_VARS is an older name for $_POST.

And of course, as the manual will explain:

foreach($_POST['name'] as $val)

//is equivalent to the older (pre-PHP4)

reset($_POST['name']);
while(list($key,$val) = each($_POST['name']))

jmcneese

heh, MY PHP IS BIGGER THAN YOURS! :p

try this:

print_r($_POST);

Weedpacket

Originally posted by jmcneese
heh, MY PHP IS BIGGER THAN YOURS! :p

try this:
print_r($_POST);
[/B]

It's not size that's important, it's what you do with it .... and what can you do with that? 😃

madhatter

Cheers guys for all ur help... I'm making progress...

I've dropped the following routine in place and it's building my sql statements a treat.

// reset cursor
reset($POST);
// size of array
$arrSize = count($POST['surname']);

// loop through array an suck out vals into SQL
for($i=0; $i < $arrSize; $i++) {
... SQL stuff populate values using $_POST['surname'][$i] ...
}// end for

Write to DB... job done..

Thanks again...