Question

I am analyzing someone else’s PHP code and I’ve noticed that the input HTML has many hidden input fields with names that end with ‘[]’, for instance:

<input type="hidden" name="ORDER_VALUE[]" value="34" />
<input type="hidden" name="ORDER_VALUE[]" value="17" />

The PHP page that processes this input acquires each value like this:

foreach ($_REQUEST["ORDER_VALUE"] as $order_value) {
    /...
}

What is the ‘[]’ used for? Specifying that there would be multiple input fields with the same name?

Answer 1

Yes. Basically PHP will know to stick all of those values with the same name into an array.

This applies to all input fields, by the way, not just hidden ones.