[RESOLVED] Variable records to INSERT

Coruba67

Hi guys,

Am a little stuck on the concept of how to do a couple of things...

First up - if I use a multiple select box, and someone actually selects multiple options, how do I loop through the values that they have selected once the form has been submitted...

Secondly - and this is my tough one that I have been struggling with for a while - I am pulling a whole bunch of members from a table and displaying information... What I want to be able to do is allow a person coming to the webpage to update any detail on anyone and hit an update button once, then have all that information updating into the database.

The problem I am having is once the form is posted, how will I know how many results to expect and how do I define them all to then write relevant INSERT queries into the database?

Thanks in advance.

bretticus

Coruba67;10888271 wrote:
Hi guys,

Am a little stuck on the concept of how to do a couple of things...

First up - if I use a multiple select box, and someone actually selects multiple options, how do I loop through the values that they have selected once the form has been submitted...

Append array brackets to the input name attribute in your html source code.

<select name="users[]" multiple>
<option>...
</select>

By doing that, $_POST['users'], in this example, becomes an array with the values for any users selected as array elements. Now you can just do a normal array loop to insert/update records.

Coruba67 wrote:
Secondly - and this is my tough one that I have been struggling with for a while - I am pulling a whole bunch of members from a table and displaying information... What I want to be able to do is allow a person coming to the webpage to update any detail on anyone and hit an update button once, then have all that information updating into the database.

Assuming you have a bunch of text boxes. One way is to make a hidden input field for each text input with the same value. When the user submits the changes, you can compare the text input values against the hidden values. Thus, you will only burden the database with real changes.

Coruba67 wrote:
The problem I am having is once the form is posted, how will I know how many results to expect and how do I define them all to then write relevant INSERT queries into the database?

Thanks in advance.

Well, at this point, you will be making UPDATE queries if folks are making changes, right? One strategy (and this goes along with the last suggestion) is to tag all your values with the primary key for the originating record at the same ordinal position. Thus, in the select menu above, "users[]" becomes "120_users[]" where 120 corresponds to the unique (auto incremented integer) primary id for that database record. Next, you just loop through the entire query. Here's some starter code as an example.

<?php
define('POST_KEY_SEARCHED', '_users');
foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
	// only pay attention to one kind of value... 
	if ( substr($key, -( strlen(POST_KEY_SEARCHED) ) ) == POST_KEY_SEARCHED ) {
		// extract primary key to work with by isolating number...		
		$current_id = str_replace(POST_KEY_SEARCHED, '', $key);

	// Get record values back from form...
	$firstname = $_POST[$current_id.'_firstname'];
	$lastname = $_POST[$current_id.'_lastname'];
	$age = $_POST[$current_id.'_age'];

	// build query for just this record
	$sql = "UPDATE table SET firstname = '$firstname', lastname = '$lastname', age = '$age' ";
	$sql .= "WHERE primary_key = $current_id";

	// todo: execute query...
}	
}
?>

Coruba67

Awesome, thanks I'll give that a shot!! Let you know how I go!

Coruba67

Ok... getting closer thanks! Now how would I go about showing information back from the form that is relevant to one of the records.

This is pretty similar to the form I am using

<form action="dev.php" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="userID[]" value="$dbuserid">
<input type="text" name="firstname[]" value="john">
<input type="submit" value="update[]" name="submit">
</form>

Am trying this to return the result...

	$user = $_POST['userID'];

foreach($user as $key => $userValue){

	$firstname = $_POST[$key.'firstname'];
	echo "The User ID returned is $userValue, for $firstname.<br>";
}

The only thing it is putting on the screen is the $userID value and a . on each line (no $firstname), where what I am actually wanting it to do is print the relevant firstname for the userID's that have come through in the array.... what am I doing wrong here?

bretticus

Only use the array brackets on inputs that you would expect to get an array back from:

<input type="hidden" name="userID[]" value="$dbuserid"> 
<input type="text" name="firstname[]" value="john">

Those would be unlikely because you wouldn't (I dunno how'd you even do it) expect those values to be arrays. I assume PHP makes them a 1 element array.

In order to get the corresponding values for a given user, you could tack on that $dbuser to the names of the corresponding inputs and use a method similar to the one I demonstrated in my first post to get the values.

I am pulling a whole bunch of members from a table and displaying information... What I want to be able to do is allow a person coming to the webpage to update any detail on anyone and hit an update button once, then have all that information updating into the database.

Your first post led me to believe you wanted to submit this all in one big form. That is to say, all users data was in one form with one upload button. However, your subsequent post (from the code sample you shared) seems to indicate that each user "block" will have its very own form tags. In that case, when you submit just that form, you can just send the userid in your hidden field. You do not need to append or prepend any userid to the input name. It doesn't matter what the inputs are named because you know that the inputs in the $_POST array all correspond to the same userid indicated in your hidden form field.