Question

Can someone please explain to me how I can import the array data I am outputting into rows on my database.

HTML

<form id="AddRecipeForm" method="post" action="includes/add-recipe.php" class="form-inline">    
    <input type="text" name="recipe[ingredient][1]" class="input-large" placeholder="Title 1"><input type="text" name="recipe[quantity][1]" class="input-large" placeholder="Quantity 1"><br /><br />   
    <input type="text" name="recipe[ingredient][2]" class="input-large" placeholder="Title 2"><input type="text" name="recipe[quantity][2]" class="input-large" placeholder="Quantity 2"><br /><br />   
    <input type="text" name="recipe[ingredient][3]" class="input-large" placeholder="Title 3"><input type="text" name="recipe[quantity][3]" class="input-large" placeholder="Quantity 3"><br /><br />
    <button type="submit" class="btn">Add Recipe</button>
</form>

This is passed to a php form:

foreach($_POST['recipe'] as $key=>$value)
    {   

    }

print_r($_POST);

and outputs the following array:

Array ( 
    [recipe] => Array ( 
        [ingredient] => Array ( 
            [1] => eggs 
            [2] => milk 
            [3] => flour
        ) [quantity] => Array ( 
            [1] => 12 
            [2] => 13 
            [3] => 14 
        ) 
    ) 
)

I need to import each of the individual ingredients and quantities to a new row in my database table. I am using PDO to connect to my database but I am unsure how I can insert the data from the array into the rows on my database.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Well i would stucture my form a bit differently so you get ingerdients assemebled as their own array, but with the stcuture you have:

$db = new PDO($dsn, $user, $pass);

$stmt = $db->prepare('INSERT INTO ingredient (name, quantity) VALUES (?,?)');

// youll want to verify that both arrays have the same number of elements before doing this
// as part of your validation 
$ingredients = array_combine($_POST['recipe']['ingredient'], $_POST['recipe']['quantity']);

$errors = array();

foreach($ingredients as $name => $quantity)
{
    try {
       $stmt->execute(array($name, $quantity));
    } catch (PDOException $e) {
       $errors[] = array(
          'message' => "Could not insert \"$name\", \"$quantity\".",
          'error' => $e
    }    
}

if(!empty($errors)) {
   //do something?
}