duplicating form elements with array result set

[krisjo]

I'm thinking this should be simple but I'm stumped!

background:

order form with repeating element areas 1) Item: select/option 2) Quantity: input

I have a query which returns the result I want to display in area 1) which is a list of products.

I tried to setup a loop to populate the select/option with the same list as many times as needed - 4X with option to show 15x with each Item/Quantity line named with the increment of the loop.

ie. product1, quantity1
Product2, quantity2
...etc.

When I load the page containing the form, the first select/option displays the full list of product, each further iteration displays no data.

Why does the result set work only once and how can I achieve more than one line of form elements loaded with the desired data?

And is numbering each line a workable way to label the form data for processing later? Or is there a smarter way to pass that data for inserting into the database to transaction-related tables?

I've included some snips to illustrate:

PHP CODE

for ($selectP = 1; $selectP<5; ++$selectP) {
echo ("TESTLOOP Select Product: <select name=\"orderProduct$selectP\">
<option>Select an Incentive Product</option>");
while (($prow = mysql_fetch_array($resultGetIncentiveProducts))){
print("<option");
print(">$prow[2]</option>\n");
} // end while
echo("</select></br>");

echo "Quantity: <input type=\"text\" size=\"5\" name=\"productQuantity$selectP\"></br>";
} // end for

the HTML Source

TESTLOOP Select Product:
<select name="orderProduct1">
<option>Select an Incentive Product</option>
<option>Polo shirt Large</option>
<option>Tshirt Large</option><option>Tshirt Small</option>
<option>Tshirt XXLarge</option>
</select>
<br>Quantity: <input size="5" name="productQuantity1" type="text"><br>
TESTLOOP Select Product: <select name="orderProduct2"><option>Select an Incentive Product</option></select><br>Quantity: <input size="5" name="productQuantity2" type="text"><br>
TESTLOOP Select Product: <select name="orderProduct3"><option>Select an Incentive Product</option></select><br>Quantity: <input size="5" name="productQuantity3" type="text"><br>
TESTLOOP Select Product: <select name="orderProduct4"><option>Select an Incentive Product</option></select><br>Quantity: <input size="5" name="productQuantity4" type="text"><br>

Any help with a good way to achieve the desired results will be appreciated greatly.

It doesn't seem efficient to need a different query and result set for each different (up to 15!) select/option box.

Kris O.

[krisjo]

No, I'm not answering my own question! Just throwing out an idea. Still need to figure out how to do it as described in the previous post.

Rather than display a series of identical sets of form elements (which is how the page was described to me) would it be better to use a basic shopping cart type setup where the user selects one item, adds to cart, selects another item, adds to cart, selects as many items as they want not limited by coded page limits. Any easier to save to the database?

I can see an advantage in user time terms of making multiple selections on one page then submitting the order rather than reloading and reloading a one-item-at-a-time shopping cart page to build the order.

Kris O.

[gufmn]

Have you checked your query result to make sure it contains what you think it does?

[krisjo]

gufmn wrote:

Have you checked your query result to make sure it contains what you think it does?

Yessir! As shown in the actual html output. the first run of the loop pulls the 4 sample records, (Polo, T, T, T) from the result and puts them in the select list, but nothing in additional loops.

And the query works when run directly to the db (mySQL).

Or am I misinterpreting your question?

Thanks for replying by the way, didn't know how this would go Friday night!

Kris O

[gufmn]

Well, it's never a bad idea to print_r() your result just to be 100% sure.

I assume your using linked tables? You should really post the query itself.