multiple inserts from form

[bugfreek1]

Hello all,

Getting stuck on a semi-complex form in an application to track volunteers for my employer. In this portion of the script, the administrator is assigning X volunteers to a timeslot for a given job function. That means that I have to get three values into the database multiple times, with the final number not known.

I've been approaching this by setting each value as an array (lately going at it with a two-dimensional array) then trying to loop over the results with a SQL statement to insert. While there are many outstanding tutorials on how to handle multiple select fields, none that I've found deals with inserting multiple fields of information multiple times. Any ideas out there?

The values in question are sid, pid, and qty. Assign() will pass the values to Processassign() for processing.

My form code (which seems to be working well):

function assign()
{

-- excerpted code here --
echo'
<div class="leftmain">
<div class="headings">Shift Details</div>
<b>Position:</b><br>
'.$p['position_title'].'<br>
<br>
<b>Position Description:</b><br>
'.$p['position_desc'].'<br>

</div>
<div class="rightmain">
<div class="headings">Available Shifts</div>
<br>
<table class="rstyle">
<form name="editevent" method="GET" action=" ' . $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] . ' ">
<input type="hidden" name="mode" value="processassign" />
<input type="hidden" name="$arr[sid][]" value="'.$_GET['position_id'].'">
<input type="hidden" name="name" value="'.$_GET['name'].'">
<input type="hidden" name="$arr[pid][]" value="'.$_GET['position_id'].'">
';

$cur_date = "";	
$shift = new pgsql(DBHOST,DB,DBUSER,DBPASS);
$shift->connect();
$sql="SELECT * FROM eventshifts WHERE event_id = '".$_GET['event_id']."' ORDER BY shift_starttime ASC;";
$shift->query($sql) or die("Could not execute query: ".$sql." - ".pg_last_error());



if ($shift->numRows() >=1){
	//loop through results
	for($i = 0; $i < $shift->numRows(); $i++){
	$st = $shift->fetchObject($i);

	$startdate = date("M j Y", strtotime($st->shift_starttime));
	$starttime = date("g:i a", strtotime($st->shift_starttime)); 
	$endtime = date("g:i a", strtotime($st->shift_endtime)); 

		if ($cur_date != $startdate)
		{
		echo"
		<tr><th colspan=2><b>$startdate</b></th>
		<th>Qty.</th>
		</tr>";
		// now set the cur_* variables
		$cur_date = $startdate;
		}
		// print the row data
		echo'<tr>
				<td align=right><b>'.$starttime.' - </b></td>
				<td><b>'.$endtime.'</b></td>
				<td><input type="text" name="$arr[qty][]" size="5"> </td>	
			</tr>';
			}
		} else {
echo'<tr><td colspan=2>No Shifts Created Yet.</td></tr>';
}
echo'
<tr>
<td colspan=2><input type="submit" value="Assign Shifts">
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</div>';

}

function processassign()
{
// Insert data from table above.

}

[greenie2600]

bugfreek1 -

Your question is unclear. Please try distilling your problem down to its essence.

Are you asking how you can loop over a set of related fields from the $GET or $POST array without knowing how many there actually are?

Simple: just make sure your <input> fields are named in a predictable, sequential fashion (e.g., field01, field02, field03...). The PHP code that processes the form post can then test for the existence of each field in sequence, process the field if it exists, and abort the loop if it doesn't.

See the last snippet of code in this post for an example.

Is that what you were asking?

[greenie2600]

My apologies - I think I understand what you're trying to do now. I didn't realize that you could use the "name[]" thing with <input> fields; I thought it was limited to multiple <select> fields.

Shouldn't the code be pretty much the same, though? Perhaps something like this:

$number_of_fields = count( $_GET["sid"] );

for ( $i=0; $i < $number_of_fields; $i++ ) {
    $query = "INSERT INTO tablename ( sid, pid, qty ) VALUES ( " .
        "'" . $_GET["sid"][$i] . "'" .
        "'" . $_GET["pid"][$i] . "'" .
        "'" . $_GET["qty"][$i] . "' );";
    mysql_query( $query );
}

(This may not be perfect - I don't recall offhand exactly how PHP handles arrays of form fields.)