Dreaded Checkbox ...

jamz310

Hi,

Have a snip of code I need some help with. I'm am trying to read in data from a simple query and populate a table of checkboxes. I can't seem to figure out how to keep the checkboxes checked when refreshing the page. The code in "red" is probably the problem area I guess. Any ideas?

Thanks,

jamz.

$shipping=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM my_shipping_options");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($shipping)) {
echo "<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">";
echo "<td>";
echo "<input type='checkbox' name ='shipping[{$row['name']}]' value='shipping[{$row['name']}]'>{$row['name']}"; if ($_REQUEST['shipping']!="") echo " checked";
echo "</td>";

echo "</table>";

kburger

See if this is what you're trying to accomplish:

(I removed the tables for readability.)

$shipping = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM my_shipping_options");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($shipping)) {
	echo "<input type='checkbox' name ='shipping[]' value='{$row['name']}'";
	if ($_REQUEST['shipping'] == $row['name']) echo " checked";
	echo ">$row[name]";
}

jamz310

I guess I'm a little confused with this particular array. The table has two fields, id and name.

When I add the following code...

print_r ($row);

I get this:

Other Array ( [id] => 5 [name] => Other )
UPS Array ( [id] => 9 [name] => UPS )
USPS Array ( [id] => 10 [name] => USPS )
FEDEX Array ( [id] => 11 [name] => FEDEX )

When I add the following code:

print_r($shipping):

I get this:

Other Resource id #57
UPS Resource id #57
USPS Resource id #57
FEDEX Resource id #57

So the checkbox is still not checked when refreshing the page, but I think its related to the the array demensions somehow. What i'm trying to do is:

Populate the checkboxes with the "name" field from the table - which is working.
Check the appropriate names and be able to print the names that were checked somewhere else..another page.

I'm having trouble grasping this concept for some reason...

Any other thoughts...thanks again..

jamz

jamz310

echo "<input type='checkbox' name ='shipping[]' value='{$row['name']}'";

Could someone explain what "value" is in the above statement. Is it a variable that just gets overwritten or is it storage (array) or something? I guess I need someone to explain how name and value above are parsed..

thanks,

Jamz

kburger

For each iteration of your

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($shipping))

loop, $row is an associative array containing the field names and values that you selected in your query. So we have this on the first iteration: $row['id'] is '5' and $row['name'] is 'Other'. On the second iteration $row['id'] is '9' and $row['name'] is 'UPS'...

So what you want to do is check to see if what the user entered is equal to the checkbox that we're printing out at this iteration of the loop. If it is, you want to add the "selected" attribute to that checkbox.

I just don't know where your $REQUEST['shipping'] value is coming from. (By the way, the preferred method is to use either $POST['shippping'] or $_GET['shipping'].)

So to answer your question, that loop will spit out checkboxes that look like this:

<input type='checkbox' name ='shipping[]' value='Other'>Other
<input type='checkbox' name ='shipping[]' value='UPS'>UPS
...

If the form was submitted, $_POST['shipping'] will contain an array of all the checkboxes checked. This brings up another issue. I would assume that only one of these should be checked. If this is the case you should use radio buttons rather than checkboxes. I'm assuming you understand the difference.

Does this clear things up a little for you? Need more explanation?