[RESOLVED] Good way of naming/referencing elements?

johanafm

As this is a bit of a problem involving both javascript and php I hope this is the forum to go with..

Problem:
I have a form containing a table with several <input> etc per row. The user has to be able to both add and remove rows from the table. I need to be able to reference elements both clientside (javascript) and serverside (php).

Let's just deal with one <input> per row, starting out with:
{code}<input name="name1">
<input name="name2">{/code}

User adds one and removes one giving:
{code}<input name="name1">
<input name="name3">{/code}

So, what I'm looking for is a good (or best) way to handle this.

Possible solution:
on submit, before submitting the form to the server, iterate over all inputs and renaming them to, in this case
{code}<input name="name1">
<input name="name2">{/code}
and then in php, just loop over them
{php}
$i = 0;
while (isset($_POST['name' . ++$i]))
{/php}

However, it seems to me that this is a rather silly approach and would like some input on a good way of dealing with it. Would it for example be possible to use
name="name[]" for non checkbox elements?

Any input would be appreciated

JPnyc

well the best way, and my favorite way, is to reference elements in the elements array (assuming they are in a form), or instantiate an object of that particular tag name. document.forms[0].elements[0]; //will get you the first element in the form

For example to reference the first input tag on a page, use:
document.getElementsByTagName('input')[0];
document.getElementsByTagName('input')[1]; //would be the second input, etc. and

johanafm

Thanks for the input. But perhaps I was a bit unclear, as referencing on client side is rather straightforward and there are lots of options. That is more of a problem on the serverside when you don't know what form control names to expect and the use of foreach would require a lot of work as well.
However, after a good nights sleep, it struck me that I might as well just rename the last control in a set of controls to the name of the one being deleted to keep the names sequentially ordered in an easy way:
4 inputs named: input1, input2, input3, input4
input2 is deleted -> rename input4 to input2.

This approach is sufficient, but I'd appreciate more input if I've overlooked a better way of doing this.

JPnyc

OK, I misunderstood. Yes, from the sound of it that sounds like the best approach. Or at least I can't think of a better one. So this really was a server-side issue. Anyone else care to chime in?