Passing an array from one page to another

bunner_bob

I'm trying to figure out how to pass several values in a format that appears suited to only passing one value.

What I'm doing is passing the name of a table used by a previous page to the current page. When I'm on the previous page, I have the table locked so nobody else can access it. When I go to the next page, I pass the name of the previous table to the new page, which unlocks it.

It looks like this:

(on the "previous page")

$thistable = cattable;
echo "<a href=\"index.php?prevtable=$thistable\">Next page</a>;

(on the "next page")

if ($prevtable) {
	mysql_query("UPDATE " . $prevtable . " SET locked=NULL");	
}

This all works GREAT - no problems at all.

The problem is, when I want $thistable to be multiple tables (some of my pages use multiple linked tables) - which I'll unlock using an EACH loop. I try

$thistable = array('cattable','dogtable');

and what gets passed along is the word "Array" as far as I can tell, rather than the contents of the array.

I want $thistable to be flexible enough to handle just one table or a list of tables. Would I be better off setting $thistable as a session variable (so it persists outside the page change), and then just unregistering it immediately after use? Or is there a neat way of passing an array in a URL, instead of just a single value?

Thanks!

kevinsequeira

maybe u can try this
// make prevtable listof tables seperated by | like so
$prevtable = $table1."|".$table2."|".$table3;

then in the next page, extract the individual table name using strtok and then use this in the query.

say $prevtable = "aaa|bbb|ccc";
then
$prevtable = "aa|bb|cc";
$temp = strtok($x,"|");
while($temp){
if($temp!=""){
$query = "UPDATE " . $temp . " SET locked=NULL";
mysql_query($query);

}
$temp = strtok("|");
}

devinemke

Instead of using a link to get from one page to the other use a form with hidden values that comprise the array:

$thistable = array ('cattable','dogtable');
echo '<form action="nextpage.php" method="post">';
foreach ($thistable as $value)
{
echo '<input type="hidden" name="thistable[]" value="' . $value . '">';
}
echo '<input type="submit" name="submit" value="go to the next page"></form>';

If you must use a regular link instead of a form then you need to gather the elements of the array togther and append the to the query string.

staffanolin

You could check out the functions serialize() and unserialize() on php.net.

bunner_bob

I figured I'd end up with serialize() and unserialize() if I wasn't going to do it via session variables.

I ended up with

$thistable = base64_encode(serialize(array("cattable", "dogtable")));

on one end, this

<a href=\"index.php?thistable=$thistable\">Admin site home</a>

to pass the info along, and this

if ($thistable) {

$unurldb = unserialize(base64_decode($thistaable));

$arraylen = count($unurldb);

for ($i = 0; $i < $arraylen; $i++) {
	mysql_query("UPDATE " . $unurldb[$i] . " SET locked=NULL WHERE locked='$this_user'");	
}

}

to do the unlocking on the other end. Works pretty well as far as I can tell.

Thanks for all the help!

Weedpacket

urlencode() would probably be preferable to base64encode(), if you don't mind the serialised contents being legible. It would make for a shorter URL - which is important since such things are limited in how long they can be.

But you might as well use session variables for this; then all that gets stuck in the URL (if anything - it's only when cookies aren't being accepted by the browser) is a single session ID.

bunner_bob

Somebody on the PHP manual's serialize() page was touting base64_encode over urlencode - don't recall why but it works anyway...

but I like the session variables idea - will try.