Inserting Data

[darkness]

Im building a website for a school which they want to display homework on which has been set and stored in a database.

Ive made a form which has to dropn down menus and text boxs which i have copied 10 times so they can enter 10 sets of homework at 1 time without having to click the "add homework" button for every bit of homework set.

I was wondering what the easiest way of coding the php file so that it inputs all the data in the correct places as the names r the same for each place where you can put the homework in

eg.

<form action="add.php" method=post>
<input type=text name=hwkset>
<input type=text name=hwkset>
<input type=text name=hwkset>
<input type=text name=hwkset>
<input type=submit value="add homework">
</form>

Hope this isnt too confusing to understand

[Anon]

You'll need to change the names of your form elements to be hwkset[] to make PHP see them as arrays, then you can just process the array for the items.

[darkness]

I probably didnt do the eg very good, as i said i also have drop down menus in the form for the subject so for all 10 times there will be data being put into the database but some of the fields are likely to be blank, how would i get around this

this is the exact code ive got, ive just got it repeted 10 times for ease of inputing the information

<td>Group<br>and set</td><td>Subject</td><td>Staff</td><td>Date Due</td><td>Homework set</td></tr>
<tr align=center><td>
<select name=year>
<option value="7-1">7-1</option>
<option value="7-2">7-2</option>
<option value="7-3">7-3</option>
<option value="7-4">7-4</option>
<option value="7-5">7-5</option>
<option value="7-6">7-6</option>
<option value="7-7">7-7</option>
</select>
</td><td>
<select name=subject>
<option value="Maths">Maths</option>
<option value="English">English</option>
<option value="Science">Science</option>
<option value="Literature">Literature</option>
<option value="History">History</option>
<option value="Geography">Geography</option>
<option value="Art">Art</option>
<option value="DT">DT</option>
<option value="PE">PE</option>
<option value="ICT">ICT</option>
<option value="PSRE">PSRE</option>
<option value="Drama">Drama</option>
<option value="Music">Music</option>
<option Value="Modern Foreign Languages">MFL</option>
</select>
</td><td>
<input type="text" name="staff" maxlength=3 size=3>
</td><td>
<input type="text" name="date" maxlength=8 size=8>
</td><td>
<textarea name="hwkset" cols=35 rows=3></textarea>
</td></tr>

[darkness]

The only thing i can think of is name each one differently then when inserting into the database do an if statement so that if the textarea "hwkset" is empty not putting it into the database but this would involve a lot of time and coding so is there another way

[Anon]

This isn't that difficult, just name all of your duplicated fields as arrays (i.e hwkset[]) but instead of leaving the [] empty put in a number that way all you need to do is walk over the index and us an isset() test to see if the field was set or not.

So all you'd do with the data was go through 1 loop.

for ($i = 1; $i <= 10; $i++) {
if isset($year[$i]) { //do something with the year}
else { // use a default }

if isset($subject[$i]) {}
else {}

if isset($staff[$i]) {}
else {}

if isset($date[$i]) {}
else {}

if isset($hwkset[$i]) {}
else {}
}

Something like that. Ofcourse if staff is the same for the whole page then you should have it entered in it's own section and not with the duplicated data.

[darkness]

As you have probably guessed i am quite new to php and am not to sharp on arrays, just to clarify what you said, where ive duplicated the fields and at the moment i have eg.

<textarea name="hwkset" cols=35 rows=3>

will i change it to

<textarea name="<?hwkset[1]?>" cols=35 rows=3>

and then on the next one
<textarea name="<?hwkset[2]?>" cols=35 rows=3>

and so on for every field?

[darkness]

i think im ok now, ive just been told that i dont need the php tags in there

[Anon]

Right you don't need the PHP tags but what you have is correct.