how to know how many post $vars ?

nephish

hey there,

i have a form that i need to pass a number of variables to a php scritp. But the number of variables depends on the custmor logged in. For each machine he is monitoring, he needs to be able to select that or many fields from a list of check boxes.

like :

<form action='process.php' method=POST>
<?php
$machines = array('one', 'two', 'three' , 'etc');
foreach ($machines as $machine)
{
    print a check box with the $machine as the value
}
?>
then a submit button

now, how do i know in the process.php script how many machine names were passed ? and how do i get them all ?
thanks

bubblenut

If you want to iterate all $POST variables then the following would work.

foreach($_POST as $key => $value) {
  echo("The key is $key and it's value is $value<br />\n");
}

If you need to get a number of numbered keys you could try the following.

for($i=1; isset($_POST['myvar'.$i]); $i++) {
  echo("The value of myvar'.$i.' is '.$value.'<br />');
}

nephish

great !
i think your first example is just what i was looking for.

also dig your sig, if at first.... too much of my work is based on it though
he he.

thanks again

blu3

I still have another question!

What does $key?

halojoy

$some = 'text'
the variable $some has got a value
'$some' is the key of this variable = the name of it
and 'text' is the value

well, i was almost right.
key is the name of each element in an array

Arrays
An array in PHP is actually an ordered map. A map is a type that maps values to keys.

http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php

About your question:
how many $POST variables is returned.
It might be you have to take number of returned -1
if in case Submit Button has got a value returned in $POST

thorpe

A simple way to get a count of $POST vars is to use...

$count = count($_POST);
echo $count;

Not sure if it helps you with your problem though....