Form submission

[monion]

If I have a form with 50-200 input fields, how can I submit them as one PHP/MYSQL insert command?

Ex. Form has input fields of: Lastname, Firstname, SS#, favorite color.
How can I submit all of these/consolidate into a MYSQL table with field name Personalinfo?

Thank you in advance,
MO

[Atli]

Hey.

You want to insert the data form 50-200 form input fields into a single field in a MySQL table?!
You never put more than a single piece of data into a single field. It's the first, and most important, rule of database design.

If you need to store 50-200 pieces of personal info on your users, you either create a single table that has 200 columns, one for each possible piece of data (not every field has to be filled for each row), or you create a "dynamic" table, where you just store a key/value pair, filling in each as you go.

Example of the first option: (very basic)

+----+-----------+-----------+----------+---------------+--------+
| id | ss_number | firstname | lastname | favorit_color | etc... |
+----+-----------+-----------+----------+---------------+--------+
|  1 | 11111111  | John      | Doe      | Blue          | ...    |
|  2 | NULL      | Jane      | Doe      | Red           | ...    |
+----+-----------+-----------+----------+---------------+--------+

(Note the NULL for the second row's ss_number field. Indicates that there was no value provided for that field.)

Example of the second option:

+----+-----------+----------+
| id | firstname | lastname |
+----+-----------+----------+
|  1 | John      | Doe      |
|  2 | Jane      | Doe      |
+----+-----------+----------+
+----+---------+---------------+-----------+
| id | user_id | key           | value     |
+----+---------+---------------+-----------+
|  1 |       1 | favorit_color | Blue      |
|  2 |       1 | ss_number     | 11111111  |
|  3 |       2 | favorit_color | Red       |
+----+---------+---------------+-----------+

(Here, the absence of the second user's ss_number just means that it is not inserted into the key/value table.)