Getting User Input in a loop

terrym

Hi! I'm having a little difficulty getting proper User Input in a FOR loop in a Guestbook I am developing.
The program takes all the entries in the GB Table and displays them in a dynamic table on the screen, with one record per <TD> line, and the whole table is contained within a FORM. The left-hand field in this table is actually a Checkbox. The idea is that if the User puts a tick in this Checkbox, and clicks on the Submit button at the bottom, the page is re-loaded and hopefully the User can then add a comment to the previously selected record.
So, if you imagine say 10 records being displayed, with 10 checkboxes, and there is a tick in one of these boxes, when the page is re-loaded, using something like if ($HTTP_POST_VARS["id"] == "on"){, and using ECHO to see what is happening, all I can get so far is 10 ECHO's all showing that that they have been ticked.
What I would really like to achieve is when a tick is placed in one Checkbox, to know exactly which record had the tick.
Does anyone know how I can do this, or perhaps know of the whereabouts of an online tutorial where I can learn what I am doing wrong.
Thanks
Terry

designguy79

For each of the checkboxes, give them all the same name, and add "[]". For example:

Then, $HTTP_POST_VARS['many'] will be an array of each of the values that were checked. You can then loop thru the array using foreach and see which ones were checked off.

HTH!

terrym

Thanks designguy79

I now have all the boxes in the array, but using a FOR loop, I can still see all 16 results whether they have been ticked or not. I think I might need a little push to cycle thru this array. This is my code at the moment, after I have put empty brackets after name, like <input type='checkbox' name='xxx[]'></td>";...

$ticked = $HTTP_POST_VARS['xxx'];

for ( $i = 1; $i < $num_rows; $i++ ) {
echo "This Line is " . $ticked[$i] . "<br>";
}

I expect this code is completely wrong?
Terry

designguy79

Your first line there assigns $ticked to be an array.

And my favorite method of stepping thru and array is "foreach".

So...

$ticked = $HTTP_POST_VARS['xxx'];

foreach ($ticked AS $key => $value) {
 echo "This Line is " . $value . "<br>";
}

Hope that gets you on the right track...

terrym

Thanks designguy79

That works fine. So, to carry on a bit, I have another query. One of the fields displayed, but not included in the actual form, is the Table id ($id). Obviously, the form is only used to select a record.

At the moment, if I tick 1 box, only one row is echoed. If I tick 2 boxes, 2 rows are echoed. But I don't know what their ID is.
Is there an easy way to include this.

This is the bit of code for xxx:
<input type='checkbox' name='xxx[]'></td>";

And this bit is for the record id:
<font size='2'>" . $id . "</font></td>";

Thanks again
Terry

designguy79

Yes there is.

Change the line

The second method is useful if you need more than $id passed, because the $id would be the indice.

terrym

Nearly there designguy79

I didn't get any result with the first example, but sort of got a result with the second example.

Using your code example a few messages ago, what should I change to get the ID to display with echo?

Thanks
Terry

designguy79

Try this:

foreach ($HTTP_POST_VARS['xxx'] AS $key => $value) {
  echo "The line " . $value . " is checked<br>";
}

for this HTML:

Try and grasp the principle behind what is happening, it will definitely come in handy down the road. HTH...

terrym

Hooray!
It works!
This is what it looks like now.

The HTML code
<input type='checkbox' name='xxx[$id]' value='$id'></td>";

The PHP code
foreach ($HTTP_POST_VARS['xxx'] AS $key => $value) {
echo "The line " . $value . " is checked<br>";
}

Thanks again
Terry