Crossreferencing checkbox arrays

Astraeus

Hey all,

I'm running into a problem when I'm submitting a form containing multiple checkboxes submitted as an array. My idea was to be able to index them to an array position that would equal the position of the appropriate "always submitted" variables. However, when trying to access the array of checkbox values (all names are the same, with [] to make it an array, as are the values of each row) there are no null placeholders. I realize that checkboxes are not submitted if they are not checked. The processing script handles modifications/deletions from a list of rows. An example of the problem: I have 5 rows; I select the 3rd and 4th to be deleted by checking the checkbox beside each; the delete/mod script erroneously deletes the 1st and 2nd rows. Is there something simple I'm overlooking, or is the solution to this more complex (like using an image with a rollover or something like that)? I had the idea of generating the names of the checkboxes with the index in the name (Delete1, Delete2, Delete3...), but I don't know if/how you can dynamically check the variable names in the PHP processing script. I have done programming before but have only been using PHP for a few weeks.

Astraeus

Hey all,

Looks like I just needed a bit more thought applied to the problem. After the idea of custom naming the delete checkboxes, I realized all I needed to do was check the query string (or the query data in general) for the mere presence of the crossreferenced checkbox name (i.e. at index 1, check to see if Delete1 is present, etc), as this only shows up if the checkbox is checked. After searching on the web for a bit, I finally ended up in the PHP manual website. After some digging through the use of $_REQUEST and isset(), I came up with the following in my processing code:

if (!isset($_REQUEST[("Delete" . ($count + 1))])) {
...//do update stuff
} else { //DeleteX is present
...//do delete stuff
}

my count in the one script started at 1 (whole numbers for the displayed row number), while this one started at 0 (first index of the array elements in the form), so I added one. Guess I could just update the one script for consistency, but I'll save that for later. Just figured I'd post my solution in case anyone else runs into the same problem and comes across this fine forum.