Question

Have a form

<div class="customer">

<input type="text" name="customer" />
<input type="text" name="address" />
<select name="married">
  <option value="0">No</option>
  <option value="1">Yes</option>
</select>

</div>

Using jQuery, users can add as many customers as they like to the form. How do I keep each customer separated for validation and database purposes? I believe using an array field is the answer but I am concerned about empty values such as missing an address or failing to answer the “married” question.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You will have to append a [] to all your fields, so in your case it will look like this:

<div class="customer">
   <input type="text" name="customer[]" />
   <input type="text" name="address[]" />
   <select name="married[]">
     <option value="0">No</option>
     <option value="1">Yes</option>
   </select>
 </div>

Then using a server side language like php you can parse the data like:

$customer = $_REQUEST['customer']; // array holding all customer fields
$address = $_REQUEST['address'];  // array holding all address fields
$married = $_REQUEST['married']; // array holding all married fields