$_POST[] - using html form submit to MySQL INSERT

[ATS16805]

i'm sure this question has been asked, and answered here before. fogive me for being redundant, but i ran out of time to search and read before being late for work. i am hoping to make some progress when i return home. thanks for your understanding.

i simply need to know how to pass more than one form field to PHP. I've already made the MySQL db table that's going to store my data, so now i want to start using a form to populate that table, using INSERT.

According to the "beginners" book i'm reading for example, i can use insert.php as the html form action, and then in insert.php i have something like
$sql = "INSERT INTO tableName values ('$_POST[htmlFormData]')";

and i've verified that it works by using the command line to look at a test table which had only a couple of columns. okay, so that part i have. but my new table, the one i plan to use for an event calendar app i want to build, has 24 columns. how do i go about sending 24 values to the table? my approach so far, and also where i am stuck, is that i've made a form with 24 text areas, each with a different name of course. how do i tell my insert.php to make sense of those 24 different pieces of data?

i figure there's more than one way to skin this cat. so, if you're reading this and consider helping me, try to remember back when you were first learning-- what way would you do it so that it made the most sense to you, without using more advanced php functions-- just keeping it simple. i can handle complex, but i think at this point, i need to develp a better understanding of what is really going on-- why i need to do certain things w/ the code-- why PHP might need something different than my code example above to handle more than one html form field. maybe i'm on the right track?

here's what i have tried ('$_POST['textValue1'],['textValue2'],['textValue3'],['textValue4']) etc, but it obviously doesn't work, or i wouldn't be here asking for help.
😉

[kakki]

.... mmmh try ......
make a form-html-document( dynamic or static ) ....
<form action="http://XYZ.php">

in "XYZ.php" try this:
<h1>POST</h1>
<?php
print_r ( $POST );
?>
<h1>GET</h1>
<?php
print_r ( $GET );
?>
<h1>all</h1>
<?php
print_r ( $_REQUEST );
?>

.......
it shows you all values you sent ( as post, get, whatever ) as
a hash-array

afterwards you can build a insert/update/delete -statement( SQL )
INSERT INTO table ( item1, item2 ) VALUES ( '1', '2' )
=>
<?php
mysql_query ( "INSERT INTO table ( item1, item2 ) VALUES ( '".$REQUEST[ 'item1' ].'", '".$REQUEST[ 'item2']."'" )" );
?>
beware of mixing the ' and " ( i started the string with ", so use " at the ends and
' in the middle ......
if u wanna debug your sql try this construct
<?php
// mysql_query
echo ( "INSERT INTO table ( item1, item2 ) VALUES ( '".$REQUEST[ 'item1' ].'", '".$REQUEST[ 'item2']."'" )" );
?>

[ATS16805]

thank you for all the info, and suggestions. much appreciated.

i'm currently trying to debug something else, but since i haven't solved this problem yet, i'll definitely try this, and report the result.

i have however gone back to this project and tried setting something up to debug my SQL, and just to look at what's in my table so far w/out going back to the command line. i guess, as you were thinking, i wanted to have something to show what i posted from my form, and at the same time, i'd like to see also what's already in the table.

since it's such a long list, i'm also trying to figure out the best way to display all of this data on the screen at once.

my approach to displaying the results is to use mysql_fetch_array()

while ($resultsArray = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
    $id  = $resultsArray['id'];
    $col2 = $resultsArray['field2'];

etc till all fields have variables, and then i want to print those variables so i can see what's in there. i tried putting the printed results into a table at the end of this loop, but i don't get my desired results because, by nature of the loop, it creates a new table for each row.

where should i look to find a solution for this type of situation-- to print this many fields in a manageable format? or how would you tackle it?

each field has no more characters than a person's name. there are no TEXT blocks.

[LoganK]

Forget all that - your problem is here:

('$_POST['textValue1'],['textValue2'],['textValue3'],['textValue4'])

Each variable that you want in the database is a new variable, so each has to be prefixed by $_POST.

('$POST['textValue1'],$POST['textValue2'],$POST['textValue3'],$POST['textValue4'])

[kakki]

ATS16805 wrote:

i have however gone back to this project and tried setting something up to debug my SQL, and just to look at what's in my table so far w/out going back to the command line.

-> try phpmyadmin

if you wanna print all elements of a table you can do:

$q=mysql_query ( "SELECT * FROM a" );
// with mysql_fetch_array, you get all results twice
// ( one result is the number of the row, the other one the name), so i used 
// fetch_row here
echo '<table>';
while ( $row=mysql_fetch_row ( $q ) ) 
{
    echo '<tr>';
    for ( $i=0; $i<sizeof ( $row ); ++ $i )
   {
     echo '<td>';
     echo $row[ $i ];
     echo '</td>';
   }
    echo '</tr>';
}