Question

Here is what I have:
the input type text boxes are dynamically rendered from the database. code as follow:

{foreach from = $folderslist item=List}
    <input type="text" name="{$List.widgetid}" id="wcolor" value="{$List.color}" maxlength="6" onChange="display_screenplay_color('fcolor_id',this.value)" style="width:48px;">    
    <span style="color:#{$List.color}">{$List.items} </span>
{/foreach}

the column is widgetid.
so for each widgetid we want the field name and a textbox next to it with an id="$idfromdb"
That way after you hit SUBMIT it posts all the data. I want a loop that will update the db with the values of the textbox. I was wondering if I can Loop through $_POST but use regular expressions since all widget ids start with a “w” OR I can get the submitted value $_POST of each textbox, their ids start with a “w”. or any other ideas/suggestions?

Answer 1

you can use name[] or name[id] as the name of an input and PHP will convert this into an associated array for you.

<form action="test.php" method="post">
    <input type="text" name="widget[5]" id="widget_5" value="5" />
    <input type="text" name="widget[6]" id="widget_6" value="6" />
    <input type="text" name="widget[9]" id="widget_9" value="9" />
    <input type="submit" />
</form>

$_POST will include this information

array
  'widget' => 
    array
      5 => string '5' (length=1)
      6 => string '6' (length=1)
      9 => string '9' (length=1)

you can now loop though this with

foreach ($_POST["widget"] as $widgetId => $value)
    [...]