arrays or something please help

[robsgaming]

Got a question, probably been answered somewhere before but I could not find it.

The results of a query are displayed in a table with the subject, then next to the subject an input box where a number is to be entered. The results of the query differ based upon the field "area". In this case, the field area contains the entry directory 9 times, so, 9 rows will be returned.

I hope I'm making sense so far. Now, the input box next to the subject is used to put the fields in the order you want.

Heres an example:
Business Directory 1
clickCommunity.com 2
BROOKSHIRE BROTHERS 3
AUSTIN TITLE COMPANY 4
ALLSTATE INSURANCE - BRYAN JAMISON AGENCY 5
BROWN, GRAHAM & COMPANY 6
HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS 7
TAYLOR JAYCEES 8
UNION STATE BANK 9

Lets say I wanted to make Union State Bank the 2nd entry displayed and clickcommunity the last. In the input box, I would change the number of clickCommunity to 9 and Union bank to 2.

What I need to know is, how do I set an array so when I press submit, it will run the queries needed to update. I DO NOT want to run a separate query every time i want to change one entry, they will be changed all at once.

Again, I hope this makes sense. All I'm doing is displaying results, changing a number in multiple boxes, and running the query to update. I have NO CLUE how to set it up to do this. Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Sphynx]

The trick is the fact that PHP will auto-magically give you a usable array, if you tag on square brackets '[]' to the end of any field name.

for example, for your list, we could tag along the row ID with the other data, so that would make each line we echo something like

$bus_name."<input type=hidden name=\"id[]\" value=\"".$rs['row_id."\"><input type=\"text\" value=\"".$displayorder."\" name=\"displayorder[]\">";

When you submit this, on the other side you'll have an array called $id containing the values (in order) that you entered in your form. So then when you are ready to update your table, you would do something like...

for ($i = 0; $i <= count($id)-1; $i++) {
  $sql = "UPDATE {tbl_name} SET display_order = ".$diplayorder." WHERE id = ".$id[$i];
	   mssql_query($sql);
}

Yes, with this method as many UPDATE queries will execute as there are items in the list... but who cares? If you are making ppl manually number a list that's too long, then it's a moot point anyhow.

I'm a bit short on time here at work right now hope this makes some sense sorry for any typos I'll check back later on when more time :p