Dynamically Checked Checkboxes

dmonares

I am sure this isnt to hard for some, but I have been racking my brains for a few days trying to find a tutorial or another post similar to my situation.

I have a form that has all 50 states that are checkboxes. The checkboxes then are imploded to the db using a comma as a separator. When I try to edit the page I want to be able to see the current boxes that are checked by checking them. Sorry if this makes no sense but I am very new to php.

//PHP
$pref_state = mysql_result($result,$i,"pref_state");

//HTML
<input <?php if (!(strcmp("$pref_state","Alabama"))) {echo "checked=\"checked\"";} ?> name="pref_state[]" type="checkbox" id="pref_state" value="Alabama "/>

I echoed the results and it does come back with the array I am just lost past this point. I tried to use an explode function but I only made things worse and more confusing to me.

Piranha

It is bad database design to store more than one value in a field, like all selected states. I recommend that you redesign the database to have a table between the state table and the other table, like this:

CREATE TABLE selected_states
(stateid ...
othertableid...)

Then it's much easier to solve your problem because you can sort the result from the database.

Will_Poulson

Um, not totally sure what you are after, but here is a function that makes multi-check box based on supplied arrays.

function multi_select_check_box_from_array(
$form_select_id, $form_select_name, $form_array_target, $form_array_target2, $form_array_key, $form_null_display, $form_send_array
)
{

	foreach($form_array_target as $key=>$value) {




		if($key!="" && $value!=""){
			if(in_array($key, $form_array_key)){$form_display_checked="checked=\"checked\"";}
			else {$form_display_checked="";};
			$pass_id=$form_select_id.$key;
			$pass_label=$form_select_id.$key;
			$pass_name=$form_array_target2[$key];
			$display_check_bow_from_array.="
				<div class=\"frmMultiLine\">
						<input  
							name=\"$form_send_array"."["."]"."\" 
							id=\"$pass_id\" 
							value=\"$key\" type=\"checkbox\" class=\"checkbox\" 
							$form_display_checked />
						<label for=\"$pass_label\" class=\"frmLabelChk\">
							$pass_name $value : $key
						</label>
				</div>

			";};}; 
	echo $display_check_bow_from_array;

}

multi_select_check_box_from_array ("ss_method_cm_type_id", "ss_method_cm_type_id", $contact_method_array, $ss_method_cm_type_id, $ss_method_cm_type_id, " ", "ss_method_cm_type_id");

dmonares

thanks for the response!

I went ahead and created 50+ additional fields just for my checkboxes. This was much easier to work with. Now I have one more problem that I am dealing with. since I have multiple variables now I wanted to combine them into one field so when I pull them off the db they are in the following format Alabama, Alaska, etc....

I have tried this but to no prevail, all it does is print out the variable when I query it off the db for another page that just views them.

$array_states = array('$pre_al' , '$pre_ak' , '$pre_az'); //$pre_al = Alabama etc...
$pref_state = implode(",", $array_states);

dmonares

Maybe an array isnt what I am looking for (geesh I need a PHP for dummies book) I tried this too but if the Vars are NULL then it produces too many commas

$pre_al = $_POST["alabama"];
$pre_ak = $_POST["alaska"];
$pre_az = $_POST["arizona"];

$pref_states = $pre_al . $pre_ak . $pre_az; /*I know this would echo alabamaalaskaarizona but would like it to show up as alabama, alaska, arizona but only if the var is not NULL.*/

Will_Poulson

Ok, so I think you misunderstood what Piranha was saying.

So,

Suppose you have a contact table of your users identity, and that you have other tables where you store additional information about the user. Those additional tables might store other things like user login info. More to the point those other tables might store things you need multiple records for.

For instance if you are doing a website about people's cars, some of them are going to have one car and some of them are going to have dozens. You don't want to make dozens of fields just for the cars in your contact record, you want to have a table that stores the contacts_ID, and a car record. Then you loop through the car table for every car that is associated to that contact by something like car_ref_contact_ID.

So,

SELECT
contact.contacts_ID,
contact.last_name,
contact.contacts_ID,
cars.cars_ref_contacts_ID

FROM contacts

LEFT JOIN cars ON
cars.cars_ref_contacts_ID = contacts.contacts_ID

WHERE ( contacts.contacts_ID = $who you are looking for)
ORDER by contacts.last_name asc;

If you have recovered the contacts ID already (like you are going to there view page, then simplfy to

--------- Seelct * means get everything ---------

SELECT *

FROM cars

WHERE ( cars.cars_ref_contacts_ID = $who you are looking for)
ORDER by contacts.last_name asc;

So,
what he meant by:

"
CREATE TABLE selected_states
(stateid ...
othertableid...)
"
Was to create a table the just stored the individual state to contact information

state_unique_ID
state_number = 50
state_to_contact_ref_ID = $whoever_you_are_looking_for
otherinfo = "we drove there in 1934 in a packard car"

You can then either store the seperate static array for state information, (since they don't change much) or another database that you join onto for state info, or build an array in one call to the database that becomes you state array, and just ref it with the numeric value.

You don't want to have the database full of blank state fields for a number of reasons, including searching, and the idea that many peope may only have 1 state ( I presume) so you end up with all those blank records.

so,
1 id, 1 state number, 1 contact_ref_ID, end of row
2 id, 5 state number, 1 contact_ref_ID, end of row
3 id, 6 state number, 4 contact_ref_ID, end of row
4 id, 3 state number, 4 contact_ref_ID, end of row
5 id, 1 state number, 5 contact_ref_ID, end of row

Will_Poulson

In regards to you other question:
// ----------------------
$pre_al = $POST["alabama"];
$pre_ak = $POST["alaska"];
$pre_az = $_POST["arizona"];

$pref_states = $pre_al . $pre_ak . $pre_az; /I know this would echo alabamaalaskaarizona but would like it to show up as alabama, alaska, arizona but only if the var is not NULL./

// -----------------------
if($POST["alabama"]!="") { $pre_al = $start_comma.$POST["alabama"]; $start=", ";};
if($POST["arizona"]!="") { $pre_al = $start_comma.$POST["arizona"]; $start=", ";};

is an ugly way to do it. However if you absolutly need you store your array in the database as an array you can use 'serialize' and unserialize.

But, remember, we are advising not to. you want to store everything individually, and recover it direcly into an array. commas need never enter the scenario.

Also, you do not want to directly feed you post variables into your database like that, you should read up a little on 'sql injection'.

Also, you can send an array through the post/url, look around for 'array in url' that way the states are formatted when they get there, and only the selected states are sent.

good luck,

Piranha

Ty Will for explaining what I ment 😃

dmonares

I understood what piranha meant, it was just easier for me to do it the way I did for the current PHP skill level that I have.