PHP question

[VJ]

Hello,

As has been mentioned before, I'm working on a website for my brother.
I use this

http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/domform.html

to allow the user to add fields.

This yields variables of the form field1, field2, ...

However, it is possible to remove fields, so I basically have a number of field variables, but the numbering is not necessarily consequtive.

What is the best way to read these in PHP? (I'm a PHP newbie)

On could make a loop that goes from 1 to 1000 (highly unlikely the user will add that much fields ), and then check to see which fields exist.
But can it be done more efficiently?


Jörg

[dbdg]

Make the field names an array, name="title[]"

On submission you would end up with a title[] array containing all the cd titles, you can then either loop through the values or access them individually. title[0]->title[n-1]

[dbdg]

Also, if you use a decent forms class you could just let php add/remove any fields, rather then relying on any clientside scripting (javascript). With a forms class you would have 'sticky' fields so on submitting the page (to add/remove fields) you wouldn't loose any data.

I created something similar for a Purchase Order app I created about a year and a half ago.

[VJ]

Thanks!
Do you have tutorials on those form class thingies?

For now, I'll just keep the script as it is (first version of the website), but it is interesting to consider better alternatives when reworking/bugfixing the site.


Jörg

[dbdg]

Here's a tutorial on html_quickform, I believe it is one of the better group of classes, never used it myself but I have seen it mentioned countless times.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004...quickform.html

[VJ]

Great, thanks!

Edit: just remembered there is a counter variable that holds the largest number. So if a pass this to the PHP scritp, I know the end point for my loop.


Jörg

[TnT]

You don't need to know the size of the array by passing in a counter.
There's the foreach syntax:

foreach ($colors as &$color) {
   $color = strtoupper($color);
}

The & here is for passing by reference to allow modification of the elements and also references use less memory then copying the elements. Although if you want to be sure nothing inadvertently changes the elements then don't pass by reference.

or you can even get the number of items in the array:

$count = count($array);

[VJ]

cool....


Jörg