Form and checkboxes

dantexxx

Hi.

I need some help with manipulating form vars, in particular checkboxes. I currently have a form setup that dynamically creates X number of checkboxes, all named "accept_check_X" where X is the index # of that record from the DB.

When I submit I want to be able to check the status of each checkbox to see if it's set to on or off. Right now I'm using $_POST, but it doesn't seem to contain the checkboxes that were left unchecked. It just has the checkboxes that were checked and submitted.

Is there anyway I can check the status of all the checkboxes from the previous page?

Weedpacket

Basic protocol, that. If the box is unchecked the value isn't returned (see the HTML standard for details).

If you want to know if the box is unchecked, just use a process of elimination. Is $POST['accept_check_1'] set? Yes? then checkbox accept_check_1 was checked. No? Then it wasn't. Ditto for accept_check_2, accept_check_3, ... accept_checkn.

dantexxx

Hmmm thing is, I won't know what indexes will be pulled from the DB to name the checkboxes.

So I could end up having checkboxes named:

accept_check_1
accept_check_10
accept_check_343
accept_check_232
accept_check_55
accept_check_11
accept_check_1000

Weedpacket

Can't you ask the DB again what the indexes were?

If you don't want to do that (or even if you do), have a look at the possibility of using session variables to store information like that (i.e., the complete list of indexes) - it provides a way of carrying data from one page to another without having to go to such contortions as sticking it in a hidden form field (which is nasty for more than one reason, especially if it's a lot).

dantexxx

What do you mean by "ask the DB again what the indexes were" ?

bretticus

You're obviously querying the database to get the indexes in the first place. You can:

write the idexes to a hidden field with a text-delimited value, and compare your checkbox posts to the value...or...
Do the same thing by storing a text-delimited value, or an array, in a session variable and again compare them in your from handler.

Good luck!