[RESOLVED] Logic request: Use checkboxes to take multiple entries and place in a single entry

TobyRT

Hi,

I'm basically trying to create an email system which will allow my colleague to select jobs from a list using checkboxes which will then populate a textarea for formatting, then be sent out in an email. Not looking for too much code here, just a couple of snippets to point me in the right direction!

I can create the listof jobs and add checkboxes, I'm just not sure where to go from here.

Having browsed the forums I'm guessing a foreach() loop would be called for, but I'm not sure how to get the multiple values from the checkboxes into an array, and from there how to put them in a variable to put into a textarea.

Any pointers here would be much appreciated!

visualAd

If you append [] to the checkbox names, all the selected values will be added to an array automatically by PHP.

<input type="checkbox" name="checkArray[]" value="1" />
<input type="checkbox" name="checkArray[]" value="2" />

As for the textarea. How do you want the values displayed? Functions such as implode(), can merge all elements of an array into a string using a specified string delimeter.

TobyRT

Cheers for that,

It's actually a set of fields, with no specific delimiter!

I've got some code I've done, but I know it's all wrong, I'll post when I've finished me tea!

TobyRT

OK, here's what I got so far: (i've trimmed the html code down to the relevant bits)

jobsmailselect (where we do the ticking):

<form action="eventadmin/jobsmail.php" method="post">
<?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
		{ 
		?>
			<tr>
			  <td><a href="jobsfull.php?id=<?php echo $row['id'];?>"><?php echo $row['jobtitle'];?></a></td>
			  <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['dateadded']);?></td>
			  <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['closingdate']);?></td>
			  <!--Link to edit info-->
			  <td><input type="checkbox" name="send[<?php echo $row['id'];?>" value="checkbox"></td>
			</tr>
			<?php
		}
		?>

Now, this was definitely sending something to jobsmail.php, but rather than populating a textarea as I expected, it went straight to send the email, but obviously (thankfully!) got caught up in the error checking. I think this is something to do with the way i have jobsmail.php set up. Jobsmail.php was working when I manually filled in the information - on clicking 'send' it sent the mail. In this case there IS a $_POST['submit'], but rather than coming from itself, it's coming from jobselect.php. I think this is why it's trying to 'send' too soon, but I can't figure how to reorder the structure. Would it be best to make the form in jobsmail.php point to a third page which does the sending?

Here's the code for jobsmail.php:

<?php

//if the form has not been posted, display the form for the text to be entered into
if (!$_POST['submit'])
{
	if (!isset($_GET[$jobsend]))
	{
	echo 'sorry, you have not selected any jobs to put in the email';
	}
	else
	{
	 require_once('../../sypphp/sypcms/DbConnector.php'); 
	$connector = new DbConnector();
	foreach($jobsend as $id)
 	{
$result = mysql_query('SELECT id, company, jobtitle, jobdesc, contact, , DATE_FORMAT(closingdate,"%d %M %Y") AS closingdate FROM jobs WHERE id = "$id" ORDER BY closingdate ASC');
	}//end foreach
	}//end if !isset
?>
	  <form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="POST">
		<table width=100% align="center">
		<tr>
		  <td width="20%">From Name:</td>
		  <td width="80%" align="left"><input type="text" name="from" size="30"></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
		  <td>From email:</td>
		  <td align="left"><input name="frommail" type="text" id="frommail" size="30"></td>
		  </tr>
		<tr>
			<td width="20%"> Subject </td>
			<td width="80%" align="left"><input name="subject" type="text" id="author" size="30"></td>
		</tr>

	<tr>
	  <td>Body</td>
	  <td align="left"><textarea name="body" cols="50" rows="15">
	  <?php
	  while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
	  {
		echo'<p><h3>'.$row['company'].'<br></h3><h4>'.$row['jobtitle'].'</h4>';
		echo'<p>'.$row['jobdesc'].'</p>';
		echo'<p><b>How to apply</b><br>'.$row['contact'].'</p>';
		echo'<p><b>Closing Date: </b>'.$row['closingdate'].'</p><hr>';
	  }
	  ?>
	  </textarea></td>
	</tr>
	</table>
	<div align="center"><input type="Submit" name="submit" value="Send Mail">
	</div>
	</form>

	<?php
}
else
//CONTENT HAS BEEN ADDED AND SUBMITTED - BUILD QUERY TO GET USERS AND EMAIL INFORMATION
{
$errorlist = array();
$postfrom = $_POST['from'];
$postfrommail = $_POST['frommail'];
$postsubj = $_POST['subject'];
$posthtml = $_POST['body'];
$posttext = nl2br(strip_tags($posthtml));

if (trim($_POST['from']) == '') {$errorlist[] = 'You need to enter the sender\'s  email address';}
if (trim($_POST['subject']) == '') {$errorlist[] = 'You need to enter a subject';}
if (trim($_POST['body']) == '') {$errorlist[] = 'You need to enter some body';}

	if (sizeof($errorlist) !== 0)
	{
	echo 'The following errors have been encountered:<br>'; 
	foreach ($errorlist as $value)
	{
	echo $value . '<br>';
	}
	} //end if errors
	else
	{								
		require_once('../../sypphp/sypcms/DbConnector3.php');
		$connector = new DbConnector();
		$mailinglist = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM mailinglist') or die(mysql_error());
		if (mysql_num_rows($mailinglist) > 0)
			{		
				echo 'Mail sent to: <br>';						
				while ($mail = mysql_fetch_array($mailinglist))
				{

				$name = $mail['name'];
				$to = $mail['email'];


					//	{	
					//	echo $mail['name'].' '.$mail['email'].'<br>';
					//	}

						// Grab our config settings 
						require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/config.php'); 

						// Grab the FreakMailer class 
						require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/MailClass.inc'); 

						// instantiate the class 
						$mailer = new FreakMailer(); 

						// Set From name & address
						$mailer->FromName = $postfrom; 
						$mailer->From = $postfrommail; 

						// Set Reply address
						$mailer->AddReplyTo($postfrommail, $postfrom); 

						// Set the subject 
						$mailer->Subject = $postsubj; 

						// Body 

						$htmlBody = '<b>My</b><i>HTML</i> Body....'; 
						$textBody = strip_tags($htmlBody); 
						$mailer->Body = $posthtml; 
						$mailer->isHTML(true); 
						$mailer->AltBody = $posttext; 

						// Send the mail... 



						// Add an address to send to. 
						$mailer->AddAddress($to, $name); 

						if(!$mailer->Send()) 
							{ 
							  echo 'There was a problem sending this mail!'; 
							} 
							$mailer->ClearAddresses(); 
							$mailer->ClearAttachments(); 
							echo 'mail sent to '.$name.', '.$to.'<br>';	


						} //end while
						echo '<a href="/index.php">Click to return to the index page</a>';

				}//end elseif rows

			}//end error check

} //end elseif submitted
		?>

visualAd

If you have a field named submit in the jobsmailselect.php file, it will be picked up in the jobmail.php script, this may be your problem.

I suggest that you clean up your code up a bit too. It will make finding logic errors a lot easier. If you have indeed posted your entire jobmail.php script; first off I notice that you use an undefined variable $jobsend. If you haven't already, change the error reporting level in the php.ini file to E_ALL or if you don't have access to php.ini or don't want to cause other scripts to spit out notices add the following line to the top of your scripts during development: (PHP will now report use of any undefined variables - get into the habbit of initialising variables before using them. These notices are a god send for finding typos in variable names)

error_reporting(E_ALL);

Second, in your jobsmailselect.php script, you have missed the closing square bracket off the names of the checkboxes.

              <td><input type="checkbox" name="send[<?php echo $row['id'];?>[size=5]][/size]" value="checkbox"></td>

You should keep output separate from the processing of the script. If possible they should be in separate files. Also, where you need to mix PHP with HTML (and this should just be to display variables and modify display logic), you should use the alternate syntax. This makes the code easier to read:

?>
<form action="eventadmin/jobsmail.php" method="post">
<?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)): ?> 
    <tr>
        <td><a href="jobsfull.php?id=<?php echo $row['id'];?>"><?php echo $row['jobtitle'];?></a></td>
        <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['dateadded']);?></td>
        <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['closingdate']);?></td>
              <!--Link to edit info-->
         <td><input type="checkbox" name="send[<?php echo $row['id'];?>]" value="checkbox"></td>
    </tr>
<?php endwhile; ?>

My last comment is with regard your HTML. You should not use tables for layout of forms or layout in general. Unless the data inside is tabulated data - i.e: a table of figures, you should not use them. Here is an example of how you would create a form using CSS instead of tables.

I don't mean to be critical, but heading these points will in the long run be of benefit to you.

TobyRT

Thanks visualAd, I'll certainly look into that alternative syntax ('dem curly braces don't 'arf give me an 'eadache!)

Why shouldn't I use tables? Apart from the fact i've never quite got my head around CSS, I've generally seen that tables give the most consistent layout.

laserlight

Why shouldn't I use tables? Apart from the fact i've never quite got my head around CSS, I've generally seen that tables give the most consistent layout.

As visualAd pointed out, tables are meant for organising tabular data, not for squeezing layout into some pseudo-tabular form. Tables used for layout are 'consistent', so much so that it is fixed and inflexible. Contrast this to the flexibility of csszengarden, for example.

visualAd

Not so much with HTML. But XHTML is an application of XML. In XML the data must have meaning and structure. If you use tables for presentation you are breaking the first of these.

None the less, the original intention of HTML was to mark up documents which are to be dispalyed on the Internet via HTTP. It included a few sets of simple formatting tags and , tables and most important of all <a> anchors which enabled the creation of links. Extensions like tags, layers and frames were all added to enable visual presenation, but shouldn't have been.

You'll notice table layouts are more often than not confusing. Not to mention the headache you'll have when you want to change the design.

All aspects of presentation in HTML have now been moved to CSS. When you create an HTML file you must ensure that the data is grouped and displayed in a logical order through use of div's. You then slap on a style sheet and apply the presentation after.

Not only does this simplify design it separates the presentation from the data making them both easily interchangable by the developer and the client.

TobyRT

Ahhh... zen has enlightened me.

Sadly, I'm not much of a designer at the best of times. I'll put css design on my to do list, after making the data work 🙂

[edit]I've just done some more research into CSS and realised why I never used it. My reasoning now is highly flawed, but the main problem I had was that the layouts were very poorly compatible - largely because opera and firefox hadn't really taken off, and netscape (as soooo many pages say) didn't handle layers very well.

I'm too far gone into this project to start changing now without a complete re-write (which will have to be done by january, for reasons I won't go into).

Your tips, however, are duly noted and will certainly be incorporated into my next deisgn (whatever it may be). Many thanks.

Right - now to try and get the script to work...

TobyRT

OK, going nuts now, I've got the form posting the form, but as far as I can tell, not it's contents. I keep getting

"Undefined index: test in /home/thesypuk/public_html/admin/jobsmailselect.php on line 85"

I'm using the same format I've used to post forms before, but for some reason it's not picking this up.

Here's a cut-down version of the form (with some html missing for clarity):

<form action="<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>" method="POST">
<?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
		{ 
		$id = $row['id'];
		?>
			<tr>
			  <td><a href="jobsfull.php?id=<?php echo $row['id'];?>"><?php echo $row['jobtitle'];?></a></td>
			  <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['dateadded']);?></td>
			  <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['closingdate']);?></td>
			  <!--Link to edit info-->
			  <td><input name="test" type="checkbox" value="1"></td>
			</tr>
			<?php
		} //endwhile
		?>
<tr>
			  <td colspan="4" align="center"><input type="Submit" name="submit" value="Format these jobs"></td>
			</tr>
		  </table>
		  </form>

and here's the bit i've got trying to test it:

if (isset($_POST['submit']))
{
echo 'jobs posted';
	if (is_array($_POST['test']))
		{
		echo 'the field posted<br>';
		}
		else
		{
		echo 'no fields posted';
		}

}

?>

Please help!

visualAd

Where is the submit button for your form?

TobyRT

<form action="<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>" method="POST"> 
<?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) 
        { 
        $id = $row['id']; 
        ?> 
            <tr> 
              <td><a href="jobsfull.php?id=<?php echo $row['id'];?>"><?php echo $row['jobtitle'];?></a></td> 
              <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['dateadded']);?></td> 
              <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['closingdate']);?></td> 
              <!--Line 85 Below--> 
              <td><input name="test" type="checkbox" value="1"></td> 
            </tr> 
            <?php 
        } //endwhile 
        ?> 
<tr> 
              <td colspan="4" align="center">
<!-- HERE'S THE SUBMIT BUTTON -->
<input type="Submit" name="submit" value="Format these jobs"></td> 
            </tr> 
          </table> 
          </form>

TobyRT

hmm...it seems to be a problem with the is_array() (i suspect in that it isn't one!)

If I replace is_array() with isset() it works fine!

i've also noticed that if I don't check the box, I get the 'undefined' error, if I do, i get the error check saying that nothing was posted.

I obviously need some error checking here, but I'm not sure how to do it...

help!

please?!

visualAd

Yes, you will. You should test if it is set first. Also it will not be an array unless you append [] to the chackbox name in the HTML.

First you should chekc if the vlue is defined, then chack its value:

if (isset($_POST['test']) && $_POST['test'] == '1')) {
}

If you want to return a value regardless of whether or not the checkbox is selected, define a hidden input element with the same name and the deisiered default value first:

<td>
    <input name="test" type="hidden" value="0">
    <input name="test" type="checkbox" value="1">
</td>

TobyRT

Thanks for your help Visual Ad, here's the code I have now, I've modified it to reflect the values it should!

The initial form containing the checkboxes

<?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
		{ 
		$id = $row['id'];
		?>
			<tr>
			  <td><a href="jobsfull.php?id=<?php echo $row['id'];?>"><?php echo $row['jobtitle'];?></a></td>
			  <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['dateadded']);?></td>
			  <td><?php echo date("d M Y", $row['closingdate']);?></td>
			  <!--Link to edit info-->
			  <td><input name="send[]" type="checkbox" value="<?php echo $id ?>"></td>
			</tr>
			<?php
		} //endwhile
		?>
			<tr>
			  <td colspan="4" align="center"><input type="Submit" name="submit" value="Format these jobs"></td>
			</tr>
		  </table>
		  </form>

The errorchecking to makesure there aren't any problems before i move on:

if (isset($_POST['submit']))
{
echo 'jobs posted';
	if (isset($_POST['send']) && is_array($_POST['send']))
		{
		echo 'this is working';
		}
		else
		{
		echo 'no fields posted';
		}
}

My last (I hope) question is how do I process this array of id's to perform a SQL query against the database? There are 4 different fields I need to bring through for each id. I though foreach()-ing a query "WHERE id = '$id'" might work, but I've tried it and had no joy...

Could you please point me in the right direction? I think this is my lack of SQL coming through now!

laserlight

After validating the ids as integral, say by looping over with [man]ctype_digit/man, you would then use something along the lines of:

$query = "SELECT columns FROM tablename WHERE id IN (" . implode(',', $_POST['send']) . ")";

TobyRT

ooh - now that's clever - I'll have a butchers at that when I get home (bally work getting in the way of playtime!)

TobyRT

Right, with a bit of piggery jokery (and transferring the sendmail section to another page) I've finally got it working - many thanks for all your help visualAd & laserlight!