Question

How can i have three or more select tags with same names(as in my program, the select tags are being generated dynamically), and select independently what option was selected.
I have a loop, where my php reads a sql table, and for each row, it creats a select tag and a button with it.

<select name="vote">
    <option value="1">1</vote>
    <option value="2">2</vote>
    <option value="3">3</vote>
</select>

<input type="button" onclick="vote()">

So suppose i have 3 rows in my sql table, so 3 select tags with buttons would be created.

Now my question is how can i see what select tag has what option seleted??

Can anyone help me with this.

Zeeshan

Answer 1

When you have multiple elements in a form with identical name attributes, they become a collection (essentially, an array) in the DOM.

So where you might have one select like this

<form name="test">
  <select name="example"></select>
</form>

You would access the select element like so

document.forms.test.example;

Now, if you had 2 or more, like this

<form name="test">
  <select name="example"></select>
  <select name="example"></select>
  <select name="example"></select>
</form>

You would access them in the DOM like this

document.forms.test.example[0];
document.forms.test.example[1];
document.forms.test.example[2];

EDIT

Oh, on the PHP end, it won’t recognize multiple values unless you add [] to the name – this tells PHP to not replace same-key-name values, but rather use them as an array.

<form name="test">
  <select name="example[]"></select>
  <select name="example[]"></select>
  <select name="example[]"></select>
</form>

Then, you would read these values like so

<?php

$exampleArray = $_GET['example'];
// you can now loop over $exampleArray or whatever.