[RESOLVED] Dealing with list (multiple select) submissions from a form

benbox

Hey all!

If I have this in a form, how can I deal with the $_POST result if multiple items in the list are selected? :queasy: I've been searching the net for such answers, but I think I'm searching for the wrong things as I can't seem to find what I'm looking for.

From what I've tried just, only the last selected item in the list goes through on $_POST

I basically want a list of items, which would have a certain operation done on them if selected on the following page.. but need to get ALL of the selected items first!

Thanks 😃

  <select name="var" size="3" multiple>
    <option value="1">Value1</option>
    <option value="2">Value2</option>
  </select>

bradgrafelman

Try making the SELECT an array when its posted by adding [] to the end of the name, e.g. name="var[]".

When it's submitted, the value of $_POST['var'] will be an array of options selected (or it won't exist, if they didn't select anything - make sure you check for this!).

benbox

Oh, wow.. as simple as that! Thanks very much!

It's amazing how I've never come across this in the years I've been playing around with websites..

bradgrafelman

The concept is actually useful with multiple entities, such as checkboxes. For example, say you have multiple checkboxes with separate values, like so:

<input type="checkbox" name="delete[]" value="1">
<input type="checkbox" name="delete[]" value="2">
<input type="checkbox" name="delete[]" value="3">

Using the [] as I did, you can have a single array element, $_POST['delete'], be populated with an array of all of the values the person checked.