Multiple Selection POST forms

[jimleon]

I have a post form for adding news articals to our website. It sends the headline and content and which category it belongs to to our MySQL database. This all works fine if a single category is selected. However, if i select more than one category it will only post the last one selected, hence if i select category 2, 4 and 5, it will only post one submission related to category 5. How do I set it to have either 3 submissions (ie cat 2,4 & 5) to the db or change something at the database end to handle receiving multiple selections.

<td>
<select name=\"cat_id\" size=\"4\" multiple>
<option value=\"2\">Category1</option>
<option value=\"3\">Category2</option>
<option value=\"4\">Category3</option>
</select>
</td>

Thank in advance

[pbmods]

Heya, Jim.

You posted this in the Articles section. I'll go ahead and move it to the Forum where an Expert will be more likely to find it.

[ak1dnar]

I have a post form for adding news articals to our website. It sends the headline and content and which category it belongs to to our MySQL database. This all works fine if a single category is selected. However, if i select more than one category it will only post the last one selected, hence if i select category 2, 4 and 5, it will only post one submission related to category 5. How do I set it to have either 3 submissions (ie cat 2,4 & 5) to the db or change something at the database end to handle receiving multiple selections.

<td>
<select name=\"cat_id\" size=\"4\" multiple>
<option value=\"2\">Category1</option>
<option value=\"3\">Category2</option>
<option value=\"4\">Category3</option>
</select>
</td>

Thank in advance

If I jumped to the correct track. This might do the initial job for you.

Form

<form action="server.php" method="post" name="myform">
<select name="cat[]" multiple>
  <option value="Cat1">Cat1
  <option value="Cat2">Cat2
  <option value="Cat3">Cat3
 
</select>
<input name="" type="submit" />
</form>

server.php

<?php 
$selected_cats = $_POST['cat'];
print_r($selected_cats);// This is How it looks like 
echo '<br>';
// loop through array write each instance to db
while (list($key, $val) = each ($selected_cats)) {
$insertSQL = "INSERT INTO yourtable (yourfield) VALUES ({$val})";
echo $insertSQL.'<br>';
} // end loop
?>

P.S. Since you have used <select name=\"cat_id\" size=\"4\" multiple> "escape" like this format, just imagined you are with a Php Backend, Just throw it away if not.

[Vinnie123]

ajaxrand is correct. The part you were probably missing was naming the select ctrl as "cat[]" instead of "cat". Naming it simply "cat" will cause it to only send the last selection rather than all selections.

[ak1dnar]

ajaxrand is correct. The part you were probably missing was naming the select ctrl as "cat[]" instead of "cat". Naming it simply "cat" will cause it to only send the last selection rather than all selections.

Indeed ! And Its Not Only for ListMenus. you can Use the same Tech with Other HTML Form Elements too.
By Putting "[ ]" to the Form Element you are making a array.

Example

<input name="element_name[]" type="text" value="1001"/>
<input name="element_name[]" type="text" value="1002"/>
<input name="element_name[]" type="text" value="1003"/>

[pbmods]

While we're having fun with this, did you know you can create multidimensional arrays this way as well?

Check this out:

<input name="form[username]" value="James" />
<input name="form[cookies][]" value="Chocolate Chip" />
<input name="form[cookies][]" value="Oatmeal Raisin" />
<input name="form[cookies][]" value="White Chocolate Macadamia" />
 

When the form is submitted, here's what $_REQUEST looks like:

Array
(
    [form] => Array
        (
            [username] => James
            [cookies] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Chocolate Chip
                    [1] => Oatmeal Raisin
                    [2] => White Chocolate Macadamia
                )
        )
)