Adding fields to a form using $_GET

[ben2_0]

Hello, this is my first post here. As a disclaimer, I've never really considered myself a coder (I do more of the graphic design/ front end), but lately the crew at work has asked me to start building e-mailer forms in PHP, something I learned in college but never intended on using, my mistake I guess. 😉

Getting into the mess-- I'm working on developing a weekly production schedule for the TV studio where I work, but I can't seem to figure out how to generate a unique form field when a user clicks "add." There are more than a few places to do this, to say the least. I've tried sending variables through $GET and it seems to work until I click another link on the page because then the $GET value would update to the new one and I'd lose the old input field. The current version I have drops a new input field on every day of the week, not just one. I feel like I just keep circling around the right way to do it. The end result is to send it in an e-mail, and a MySQL database, but I need to tackle this issue before I move on.

What the site currently looks like:
http://www.staticcat.com/weekly

What I was hoping to do was get the "add" and "delete" links working on Shoot Name/Show and then just repeat the code for the rest.

In the header:

	<?php		
		$fcounter = 1;
		$add = $_GET['add'];
		$del = $_GET['del'];


		function printlist($fcounter, $date){ 	// this function pretty much does everything - 
										    	// it prints and gives a unique id to each field
										    	// on the table. the function is called inside the 
										    	// table below in snippets of PHP. - B2.0

				$counter = 'f'.$fcounter.'d'.$date;
				print '<td class="showspace">'; // Shoot name Show.. IDs are SNS or the like of.
				print '<input type="text" size="25" id="sns'.$counter.'" name="sns'.$counter.'" value="" />';
				global $add, $del;
				$SNSadd = preg_match("/SNS/", $add);
				$SNSdel = preg_match("/SNS/", $del);

				 if ($SNSadd == 1) {
				 		print "input field";
						// added fields should go here, right?

				}
 				if ($SNSdel == 1) {
 						print "remove field";
 					// delete the fields w/ function here
				}

			 	print '<a class="add" href="?add=SNS'.$date.'">Add</a> <a class="del" href="?del=delSNS'.$date.'">Delete</a></td>';

				// Production . Id = Prod 
				print '<td class="prodspace"><select id="prod'.$counter.'" name="prod'.$counter.'">
					<option value="">Producer</option>
					<option value="phyllis">Phyllis</option>
					<option value="penelope">Penelope</option>
					<option value="leisa">Leisa</option>
					<option value="valentina">Valentina</option>
					<option value="dave">Dave</option>
					<option value="karl">Karl</option>
					</select>
					<a class="add" href="?addProd">Add</a> <a class="del" href="?delProd">Delete</a></td>';

				// Shooter . Id =  shoot
				print '<td class="shootspace"><select id="shoot'.$counter.'" name="shoot'.$counter.'" onChange="">
					<option value="">Shooter</option>
					<option value="al">Al</option>
					<option value="jason">Jason</option>
					<option value="freelance">Freelance</option>
					</select>
					<a class="add" href="?addShoot">Add</a> <a class="del" href="?delShoot">Delete</a></td>';

				// Location - Id = loca
				print '<td class="locaspace"><input type="text" id="loca'.$counter.'" name="loca'.$counter.'" value="" />
					   <a class="add" href="?allLoca">Add</a> <a class="del" href="?delLoca">Delete</a></td>';

				// Notes . Id = notes
				print '<td class="notespace"><textarea id="notes'.$counter.'" name="notes'.$counter.'" value=""></textarea></td>';
		}

	?>					 

and a row in the table in the body looks like this:

						<?php 
							print date('m-d', strtotime('last Sunday'));
							$sun = date('m_d_y', strtotime('last Sunday'));
							printlist($fcounter, $sun); 
							$fcounter++;
						?>

Thanks for the help!

• B2.0

[BuzzPHP]

From what I can see, you need to encode your URL's a little better. You are on the right path. Almost.

You have 3 variables per link.

1) The command. Add or Delete
2) The target. Name, Producer, Shooter and location
3) The id of the current day.

You need to code a simple function to generate an anchor given those three variables. The anchor effectively triggers an "action". Or, as some people call it, an "event"

<?php

function Link($command, $target, $id)
{
  return "<a href='?action=$command,$target,$id'>[$command]</a> ";
}

for ($i = 1; $i < 10; $i++)
{
  echo 
    Link("Add", "Name", $i) . Link("Del", "Name", $i) . 
    Link("Add", "Producer", $i) . Link("Del", "Producer", $i) . 
    Link("Add", "Shooter", $i) . Link("Del", "Shooter", $i) . 
    Link("Add", "Location", $i) . Link("Del", "Location", $i) . 
  "<br>";
}

$action = explode(",", $_GET["action"]);

echo "<br>";
echo "Command: " . $action[0] . "<br>";
echo "Target: " . $action[1] . "<br>";
echo "Id: " . $action[2] . "<br>";

?>

Then a click on any one of those variables will provide enough information to determine the "action" that should be taken.

A "switch" can be used to apply the given command to the given target with the given id.

Hope that helps.