Looping through form fields

[Mandakins]

I've got an online 'Best Of' poll with 83 'questions' (some of which may be left blank) and want each answer to go in as its own record.

For example:

Places: Best Restaurant _______ (answer)
Places: Best Bar _______ (answer)

So 83 of these, but 2 database fields - Category and Answer

I want the [Places: Best Restaurant] to go in the Category field and the response to go in the Answer field.

If I create an array, I lose my Category variable unless I can also pass a hidden field for the Category. Then if I could create an array, how on earth do I break them apart and loop through them to get them into the database?

Am I making this too difficult for myself? My goal is to have a clean database so that at the end of the poll, I can sort by Category and Answer and the responses will be easy to count - especially if people type the names a bit different - because they'll all be grouped together.

My head hurts.

[meekos]

A few questions:
1.) Are the answers chosen from a list or type in to a textbox?

If chosen from a list, you can create tables for category, answer and result.
Category Table
cat_id,
cat_name;

Answer Table
ans_id,
ans_name;

Result:
result_id,
cat_id,
ans_id

This format should make it easier to total later.

Hope this helps.

[Mandakins]

Unfortunately it's all fill in the blank.

Any suggestions?