Seeking some advice (ie: theoretical code)

badgoat

Hi!

My project involves selecting people from a table who will be attending an event. The event details are recorded in one table, and atendees are recorded in another. I want to be able to select attendees from the attendee table and note it in the event table, probably by attendee ID. There will be a maximum of up to 10 attendees. My questions:

1) How to incorporate into an HTML form the selection of multiple attendees without having to go to a separate page to select the attendees?

2) How to structure the MySQL event table to allow for up to 10 attendees? (If I had to guess, I think I would create 10 columns for the potential attendees and insert the attendee ID in each)

3) How to display the attendees once the 'event' form has been completed?

I am getting more and more familiar with PHP. It's not an all-encompassing familiarity, I am just familiar with the parts that I have dealt with, so I am sure some of the advice I am given may seem simple.. I see this as broadening my PHP horizons. 🙂

devinemke

a classic many-to-many data relationship.
3 tables: 1 for attendees, 1 for events, and a 3rd that links them together

attendees
attendee_id (INT) PK
name (VARCHAR)
email (VARCHAR)

events
event_id (INT) PK
name (VARCHAR)
location (VARCHAR)

links
link_id (INT) PK
attendee_id (INT)
event_id (INT)

create a form with 2 list boxes for events and attendees. make the attendees list allow for multiple selections. part of your form validation (using javascript and/or PHP) should check to see if more than 10 attendees have been selected and spit back an error if they have.

badgoat

Maybe this isn't the right way to go, but in my noobish thinking, it seems to be an answer (which of course draws more questions)

The hope was to select an attendee from the drop down list and when the page auto-refreshes, the user's info would be displayed below, and after I was done selecting the attendees I could click the button to send it to the next page where the ID # of the attendee would be entered into a table which stores them in relation to the event.. The code below is not working correctly.. Could someone please point me in the right direction?

$connect= mysql_connect("localhost","root")
   or die("Could not connect to database in localhost !");
$result=mysql_select_db("testdiw")
   or die("Could not select that database !");
	 ?>
    <tr>
<td>Select Onsite Participant:</td>
<td>
<select name="dropdownonsite" tabindex="4" onChange=submit()>
<option value="notset">- Select a Member -</option>

<?
                        //--- CREATE ONSITE MEMBER SELECT ---
                        $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT onsitename FROM onsite ORDER BY onsitename";
                        $onsitename = mysql_query($sql) or die($sql . '<br />' . mysql_error());
                        while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($onsitename)) {
                        echo '<option value="' . $row['onsitename'] . '">' . $row['onsitename'] . '</option>';
                        }
                      ?>
</select></td>
</tr>
   <TR>
		<td align="center" COLSPAN=3>Current Onsite Participants</td>
   </TR>
   <TR>
		<td>Name</td>
        <td>Firm</td>
        <td>Phone</td>
	</TR>
    <TR>
    <?
        $sql = "SELECT onsitename, onsitefirm, onsitephone FROM onsite ORDER BY onsitename";
                        $onsitename = mysql_query($sql) or die($sql . '<br />' . mysql_error());
                        while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($onsitename)) {
                        echo '<TD>' . $row['onsitename'] . '</TD><TD>' . $row['onsitefirm'] . '</TD><TD>' . $row['onsitephone'] . '</TD>';
                        }
                      ?>


</TR>   </form>


<TR>
	<td align="center" COLSPAN=3><BR><form method=get action="onsites_added.php">
<input type="submit" value="Finished Adding Onsite Participants"> </form>  </td>
</TR>
</TABLE>

jkurrle

Not sure if you still need help, but here are some ideas for you.

1) I'd create a function that displays all attendees for a specific event and embed it within the HTML code as a PHP tag. For Example, I embed an include call to a function library near the top of my form. The function library contains the functions related to what project I'm currently working on. So, the first function I'd put in the library (after a database connect function) would be a Show_Attendees() function.

2) The next functions I'd create would be drop down list functions for the events and the attendees. This would let me select the function and who would attend the function. Upon selecting an event/attendee, clicking on the submit button would then go to a php script that would update the database, then return to the originating script.

3) I would encode the event number into the URL and reference it with a GET function. When going to a processing script, I'd send it as a hidden input variable (I use $return as my name). Then, once the processing script finishes its work, at the end of the script I have an echo statement that echoes an HTML meta refresh, which uses the return variable as where to refresh to. So, what the user sees when they click on a button is a quick screen refresh (going out to the processing script and back), and then their screen is updated.

Hopefully, this gives you an idea of how you might process your forms now...