Database entry into separate rows from textarea

[shakingspear]

While searching I found this thread, which has gotten me further then I have so far. But I'm still having problems.

I want to take the information from a php textarea form and have it inserted into separate rows in a table. The input would be like this:

Bill
Jack
Steph

I've tried a few different methods. I haven't been getting errors, but it doesn't write to the database either. I tried the code from the thread above and when I submit it adds one or two blank rows to the table (doesn't matter how many entries I put in the textarea). A step forward, but still no good. Any help would be appreciated.

Here's my messy code:

<?php
$textarea = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['textarea']);
$array = explode("\n", $textarea);


$i=0;
foreach ($array as $value) {
	mysql_query("INSERT INTO random_prompts (prompt) VALUES ('{$array[$i]}')") or die(mysql_erorr());
	$i++;
}

?>

<h2>Data Import</h2>
<form methods="post" action="">
Data: <textarea name="textarea" rows="20" cols="30"</textarea>

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Import History">
</form>

[coldwerturkey]

as the original author of that snippet; my bad for not practically testing what i write.

a method around this would be to add an if statement around the query

$value = trim($array[$i]);
if (!empty($value)) {
    //mysql_query(....
}

[shakingspear]

Unfortunately now it stopped adding blank lines and is still not inserting data.

[jazz_snob]

did you try var_dump() the sql statement to see what is actually being run?

foreach ($array as $value) { 
    // avoid sql injection attacks, use  mysql_real_escape_string($array[$i]) 
    $val = mysql_real_escape_string($array[$i]);
    $sql = "INSERT INTO random_prompts (prompt) VALUES ('$val')";
    var_dump($sql);
    mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
    $i++;
}