Preserve array key on POST

[kbc1]

Hi all

I am displaying the details of individual people in a form (kind of a booking form) and these details are being taken from a large array stored in a session.

On my script, the html form fields are named as such and are created in a loop based on the number of people on the booking (e.g.):

for($i=1;$i<=$totalcount;$i++) {
name="firstname[$i]"
name="lastname[$i]"
name="nationality[$i]"
}

Now the values of these fields are obtained from my session array however, I might only get a subset of data from the array so the values of $i could be as follows:

name="firstname[2]"
name="lastname[2]"
name="nationality[2]"

name="firstname[4]"
name="lastname[4]"
name="nationality[4]"

name="firstname[12]"
name="lastname[12]"
name="nationality[12]"

What I need to do is when I POST my form to save the details, I need to keep the $i keys so when I update my array, I update the already existing key/value pairs based on the $i values.

Is there a way to do this?

When I currently post my form and echo the POST, all form values are stored into a new array starting at key 0.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards
kbc1

[bradgrafelman]

Can you show us the resulting HTML of the page that gets generated? I made a test script with fields named using the values you gave above, and PHP didn't do any re-indexing of the resulting array.

For example, using this form:

<form method="post"> 
First: <input type="text" name="firstname[2]"><br> 
Last: <input type="text" name="lastname[2]"><br> 
<br> 
First: <input type="text" name="firstname[4]"><br> 
Last: <input type="text" name="lastname[4]"><br> 
<input type="submit"> 
</form> 

Resulted in an array like this:

Array
(
    [firstname] => Array
        (
            [2] => a1
            [4] => a2
        )

[lastname] => Array
    (
        [2] => b1
        [4] => b2
    )

)

[Weedpacket]

I get the same result as bradgrafelman, but I can suggest a way to rename the fields that will improve matters either way.

name="person[$i][firstname]"
name="person[$i][lastname]"
name="person[$i][nationality]"

Then in the $POST array there will be an element $POST['person'] containing one element for each person, which will itself be an array containing that person's firstname, lastname, nationality, and so on.

Not only would it not matter if the arrays are being reindexed (the information for one person is still grouped together), but it will be easier to loop over the single $_POST['person'] array instead of simultaneously looping over several.