Radio Button Groups

obrienkev

Hi all,

I have created a php page that displays all the questions and relevant answers from a database.

Alongside each answer I want a radio button group.
Each group must be different for each question.

My problem is that all the radio buttons are being treated as one group. I want to separate them into groups of 3.

How can I do this?

This is my output:
Question 1: What is your name?
Mike (radio button here)
John (radio button here)
Phil (radio button here)

Question 2: Hobby?
Sport (radio button here)
Music (radio button here)
Film (radio button here)

and so on...The user should be able to select an answer from each question. However, my code treats all the radio buttons as one group.

Here is what I have so far: The while function loops through the database results and displays them. How do I make each radio group fixed to each group of answers?

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
	$q = $row['entryquestion'];
	$ans = $row['entryanswer'];

if($q != $qs)
{
$qs = $q;
echo '<strong>'.$qs.'</strong><br />'."\n";
}	
echo '&nbsp;&nbsp;'.$ans.'<input type="radio" name="youranswer" value=""><br />'."\n";	
}

devinemke

what is the exact data structure? are the questions and answers all in the same table? your post suggests that you have questions and then several possible answers (mulitiple choice). the idea here is to group the possible answers in an array related to the question id. please post more info on your data structure.

obrienkev

I have questions in one table and then answers in another. They're are multiple answers for each question.

Each set of answers is linked to its relevant question.(like the output example above)

I want a radio button for each answer and these buttons are to be grouped so that they refer to each question.

Makes sense?

Thanks.

Kevin.

devinemke

i suggest that you loop thru your results and create 2 arrays: 1 for the questions and 1 for the answers, and use the primary keys as the related array keys:

$questions = array(
	1 => 'What is your name?',
	2 => 'What is your hobby?',
	3 => 'What is your favorite color?'
);

$answers = array(
	1 => array(1 => 'Mike', 2 => 'John', 3 => 'Phil'),
	2 => array(4 => 'Sport', 5 => 'Music', 6 => 'Film'),
	3 => array(7 => 'Red', 8 => 'White', 9 => 'Blue')
);

echo '<form action="" method="POST">';

foreach ($answers as $key => $value)
{
	echo $key . '. ' . $questions[$key] . '<br>';
	foreach ($value as $answer_key => $answer_value)
	{
		echo '<input type="radio" name="answers[' . $key . ']" value="' . $answer_key . '"> ' . $answer_value . '<br>';
	}
	echo '<br>';
}

echo '
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit">
</form>
';

when this form is submitted you will have an array called $_POST['answers'] that has the question_id as the keys and the answer_id as the values.

obrienkev

I get the results from a database of questions and answers.

How can I automatically populate the arrays??

Thanks for your help.

Here is my entire code:

// Perform Query
mysql_select_db('quiz') or die('Could not select Database');
$query = "select question_entry.question as entryquestion,
	  answer_entry.answer as entryanswer
	   from answer_entry
	    inner
	    join question_entry
	   on answer_entry.questionnum = question_entry.id
	   order
	    by question_entry.question,
	   answer_entry.answer";

$result = mysql_query($query);
$qs = '';

// Retrieve results
$num_results = mysql_num_rows($result); // Gives num of rows returned by query

echo '<strong>Total of '.$num_results.' Questions to answer:</strong> ';

echo '<form id="Form1" onsubmit="return confirm(\'Are you Sure?\');" action="../user_entry/user1.php" method="post" name="Form1">';

$i=0;

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
	$q = $row['entryquestion'];
	$ans = $row['entryanswer'];

if($q != $qs)
{
	$qs = $q;
	echo '<strong>'.($i+1).'. '.$qs.'</strong><br />'."\n";
	$i++;
}	
echo '&nbsp;&nbsp;'.$ans.'<input type="radio" name="youranswer[]" value='.$row['correct'].'><br />'."\n";	
}

echo '<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="submit2">';
echo '</form>';

devinemke

Originally posted by obrienkev
How can I automatically populate the arrays??

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM questions');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {$questions[$row['question_id']] = $row['question_text'];}

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM answers');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {$answers[$row['question_id']][$row['answer_id']] = $row['answer_text'];}

obrienkev

Thanks will try that.

Could you explain the variables for me please such as '$questions', 'question_text', 'answer_text'

Originally posted by devinemke
{$questions[$row['question_id']] = $row['question_text'];}
[/B]

What do they refer to??

Cheers.

Kevin.

obrienkev

OK I'm kind of confused now. Here's my code. I would be delighted if you could run through it and let me know where I'm going wrong.

// Perform Query
		mysql_select_db('quiz') or die('Could not select Database');
		$query = "select * from question_entry";
		$result = mysql_query($query);

	while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
	{
	$questions[$row['question_id']] = $row['question'];
	} 

	$query = "select * from answer_entry";
	$result = mysql_query($query);
	while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
	{
	$answers[$row['question_id']][$row['questionnum']] = $row['answer'];
	}

	$questions = array(); 
	$answers = array(); 

	echo '<form action="" method="POST">'; 

	foreach ($answers as $key => $value) 
	{ 
	 	echo $key . '. ' . $questions[$key] . '<br>'; 
			foreach ($value as $answer_key => $answer_value) 
			{ 
    		echo '<input type="radio" name="answers[' . $key . ']" value="' . $answer_key . '"> ' . $answer_value . '<br>'; 
			} 
		echo '<br>'; 
	} 

echo '<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit"></form>';

devinemke

let's back up. as i asked in my initial post: what is your exact datastructure? table names, field names, field types etc...

obrienkev

Ok.

I have two tables: question_entry (stores al questions)
answer_entry (stores all answers)

question_entry table:

FIELDS: id (the id for the question)-int
question (Stores the question text)-varchar

answer_entry table:

FIELDS: answer (stores the answer text)-varchar
questionnum (the id of the answer relevant to the question)-int

Thanks for your help.

Kevin.

devinemke

your answer table has no primary key field? this is problematic for relating answers back to questions. consider this data structure:

questions
question_id (INT) primary key
text (VARCHAR) text of question

answers
answer_id (INT) primary key
question_id (INT) relates to questions table
text (VARCHAR) text of answer

this a basic one-to-many relationship between the question and answers.

obrienkev

Actually I had. Sorry.

I want to keep the names for tables and fields that I have cos it will just mess other code.

the primary key field in answer_entry table is called 'id' and like the id field in question_entry it is unsigned, not null, and auto-increment.

Where am I going wrong??

Thanks.

obrienkev

I think my problem is setting up the arrays. If you could look at my code please.

Thanks.

obrienkev

OK I made some changes:

DatabaseName: quiz

Tables: answers(id, answer_id, answer_text)
questions(question_id, question_text)

Values:
answers:
id(primary key, int, not null, auto-increment, unsigned)
answer_id(int, not null) - this field links to question_id from questions table
answer_text(varchar, not null)

    [B]questions:[/B]
        question_id(primary key, int, not null, auto-increment, unsigned)
         question_text(varchar, not null)

Query Code: Here I want to create arrays containing the info from database. The info in the answers table should be linked to info from questions table

// Perform Query
mysql_select_db('quiz') or die('Could not select Database');

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM questions'); 

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
{
$questions[$row['question_id']] = $row['question_text'];
}

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM answers');

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
{
$answers[$row['question_id']][$row['answer_id']] = $row['answer_text'];
}

Finally the Output/Loop code:

echo '<form action="" method="POST">'; 

foreach ($answers as $key => $value) 
{ 
    echo $key . '. ' . $questions[$key] . '<br>'; 
    foreach ($value as $answer_key => $answer_value) 
       { 
        echo '<input type="radio" name="answers[' . $key . ']" value="' . $answer_key . '"> ' . $answer_value . '<br>'; 
       } 
   echo '<br>'; 
} 

echo '<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit">
</form>';

I really appreciate any help. I've been working at this for the past few days but still unable to get the sesired results.

Thanks.

Kevin

devinemke

your answers table structure doesn't make sense. which field relates to the questions table?

obrienkev

sorry. Its the answers_id field.

obrienkev

Can anyone please help me??

Thanks.