a lot of checkboxes and forms

mdowling

I am making a messaging system for my website. I want to be able to check a box for each message and do group editing stuff like delete the checked messages. The checkboxes are added in and have a number for their name value. There will be a variable number of checkboxes depending on the ammount of messages that user has. So, when I submit the form I want it to POST all the checkbox data. Once I do that, how do I determine which checkbox was checked and the value attached to it?

Basically when I add in the checkbox there is a big loop that cycles through the users messages. Here is how I add a checkbox in:

unreal128

I believe that the name variable will become active if it is checked. So for your example...
<input type='checkbox' name='c".$Row['ind']."' value='ON'>

You could test by coding...
$var="c".$Row['ind'];
if (isset($var)) {
<<do here>>
} else {
<<something>>
}

mdowling

That didn't work for me. here is how I am checking if it is checked:

if ($mnumber > 0) {
for ($i = 0; $i < $mnumber + 1; $i++) {
$var="c$i";
if (isset($var)) {
print("You wanna delete message #$i");
}
}
}

($mnumber is the number of messages in the user's inbox)

unreal128

Is the form and the page that processes it in the same file? What error do you encounter when you run the code given?

mdowling

Yeah, it's the same file, and I'm not getting an error. Just isset always returns true. $var is filled with ("cX") and checking is $var isset will only check if $var has anything in it, it doesn't seem to fill $var with the contents of the actual checkbox.

unreal128

I feel like an idiot. Sorry about that. I checked out the GET and POST functions, and found what you are looking for. To test whether the variable is checked or unchecked, it will be given the value off or on.

if ($_POST['var'] == "on") {
print "the box is checked"
}

bbreslauer

Another way to do this would be to create an array of these checkbox values. Here's an example:

<input type='checkbox' name='checkbox' value='". $Row['ind']. "' />

Then, when you submit the form, you can use this code to do something to all the checkboxes

<?php
if (isset($_POST['checkbox'])) {
    foreach($_POST['checkbox'] as $row) {
        //do something here
    }
}
?>

Personally, I think this is a little cleaner, as you're POSTing fewer variables, since all of the checkboxes are being sent in the checkbox array.

mdowling

bbreslauer:

That didn't work for some reason. When I try to go through each of the checkboxes, nothing seems to work. Just to test I set this up (changed "checkbox" to "cbox"):

if (isset($POST['cbox'])) {
foreach($POST['cbox'] as $row) {
print ("Which one: " . $row);
}
}

None of them seem to come up when I check them though.

unreal128

The correct response is in my reply from above.