Question about loops

tcsnguy08

Haven't been on in a while cause I got discouraged by this problem I am having. It is probably stupid and I am probably missing something, but what I am trying to do is a user will enter a number. Depending on what that number is ($numbers), the loop will loop that many times to create that many text boxes.

I am submitting this form back to the php page via php_self. Since I don't know what number is going to be entered by the user, I put the value entered into each textbox into an array title[]. My page requires that all text boxes be filled in, so if the user enters 12 for their number, they have to fill in all 12 textboxes. When the user submits the page, when its reloaded, the page checks to see if there is an empty field, if so it produces and error message and reloads the form. My problem is when reloading a page that has an error, I can't each textboxes entered value to display in the box. This is neccessary since the user would have to reenter every field even if just one is blank. And since I don't know what number is origianlly entered, I can't put $titles[0] so on as the value. When I try to put $titles[] in as the value php comes up with an error message. I want to know can I make a foreach or while statement that will redisplay entered values in their textboxes without knowing the amount in the array. Here is the code I have so far.

Here for testing purposes I define $numbers, normally it is a user defined number

$numbers = 12;
echo"<body bgcolor=\"#888888\">
<center><font size=\"2\" face=\"verdana\">ENTER YOUR NAMES</font><br><br><font size=\"1\" face=\"verdana\"><br>STEP 2 OF 4<br><br><br>
Please fill in each box below with the corresponding names.  Make sure all entries are complete before clicking the submit button. If you wish to enter in another number or change other info, click <a href=\"member.php\">HERE</a> to go back to your member page and restart the upload process. <br><br><br>";
if ($error == true){
echo"<center><span style=\"color:red\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"verdana\">All entries must be complete. Please Try Again.</font></span></center><br>";
}
echo"<form action=\"".$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']."\" method=\"post\">
<table width=\"400\" bgcolor=\"#EEEEEE\">
";
$i = 1;
while ($i <= $numbers){
echo"<tr><td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\">".$i."</td><td align=\"center\"><input type=\"text\" size=\"40\" value=\"".$_POST['name']."\" name=\"name[]\"><br><br></td></tr>";
$i++;
}
echo"<tr><td></td><td align=\"center\"><input type=\"image\" src=\"images/submitbutton.jpg\" name=\"enternames\"></td></tr></table></form><br><br>

In the above example the value "ARRAY" is displayed which I realize means that a specific value is not being pointed to, so how can I put each value in its correct text box? Thanks

NogDog

I'm not clear from looking at your code where you want this value to go. (I don't see any element named "title".)

Essentially, you will nave a 2nd dimension to the $POST array for these values, accessible as $POST['title'][0], $POST['title'][1], etc. You can use a foreach loop to loop through the values as:

foreach($_POST['title'] as $title)
{
   echo $title;
}

tcsnguy08

sorry the i meant $name and it goes in the form where the value is listed in the text field attribute. I tried doing a foreach loop as the value, but it came up with a php error. thanks for your help

HalfaBee

change $POST['name'] to $POST['name'][$i-1]

NogDog

Try this:

$i = 1;
while ($i <= $numbers){
   echo"<tr><td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\">" . $i.
   "</td><td align=\"center\"><input type=\"text\" size=\"40\" value=\"" .
   $_POST['name'][color=red][$i][/color] . "\" name=\"name[[color=red]$i[/color]]\"><br><br></td></tr>";
   $i++;
}

tcsnguy08

Thanks for the quick response. Adding [$i] worked like a charm. Now one last question. Once the data gets sent back to the page via the post request PHP_Self, I need the page to check each array value and if one is empty then it needs to return the page, and display an error code. If a text field is empty, when I submit the page, it doesn't properly display an error code and reload the page. I have a feeling it's because the if statement is wrong. Can you see from what I have what needs to be done for each entry in the form to be checked and if any one is empty then to display the error message. Here is what I have so far.

if (isset($POST['enternames_x'])){
$k = 1;
while ($k <= $number ){
if ($POST['name'][$i] ==""){
$error = true;
}
}

HalfaBee

Try echoing out $error to see if it is being set.

tcsnguy08

sorry I forgot to add a $i++ at the end to get the loop to increase by one, but I added that and it still didn't help. Yeah I can't get the error to come up, it always returns as if each text field is filled in even if just one is filled in. I think it's because since the array isn't empty, it even does it when all fields are empty. Any help is greatly appreciated

tcsnguy08

don't know what I just did, but I just fixed it, as far as I can see. Will repost if anything changes.

HalfaBee

I tend to use for() loops more than while() for these sort of loops. All the setup and end and counting all done in the same position.