Question

I am creating a form based on a user selection of $node_number … so the form looks like:

function createForm($node_number) {
            echo "<form id=\"form\" name=\"form\" action=\"molecule_display.php\" method=\"post\">";
           for ($n = 1; $n <= $node_number; $n++) {
                echo "<fieldset class=\"step\">
                            <input id=\"node_title" . $n . "\" name=\"node_title" . $n . "\" />
                            <input id=\"node_comment" . $n . "\" name=\"node_comment" . $n . "\" type=\"textarea\"  />
                     </fieldset>";
                            }
            echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"node_number\" value=\"" . $node_number . "\">
                    <button id=\"submit_node\" type=\"submit\">Submit</button>"
            echo "</form>";
            }

Which will create $node_number of versions of that form element. My question is how to dynamically name the form elements to be able to manage them easier when I am processing them. The way I’m doing it right now, by adding the $n iterator to the name attribute is not ideal I think.

I understand that I can declare the name=”” attribute as an array like name[]=”” … in terms of giving each sub-element of the larger form a unique name.

I’m guessing I want a multi-dimensional array of the individual form segment … just not sure how to best handle those within a form and within the $_POST variable.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

I think you can do it this way:

function createForm($node_number) {
    echo '<form id="form" name="form" action="molecule_display.php" method="post">';
    for ($n = 1; $n <= $node_number; $n++) {
        echo '<fieldset class="step">
        <input id="node_title'.$n.'" name="nodes['.$n.'][node_title]" />
        <input id="node_comment'.$n.'" name="nodes['.$n.'][node_comment]" type="textarea"  />
        <button id="submit_node" type="submit">Submit</button></p>
        </fieldset>';
    }
    echo '</form>';
}

And then get $_POST['nodes'] which will be multidimensional array, which you can iterate with foreach. You will get $_POST['nodes'][1] = array('node_title'=>... , 'node_comment'=>...); and so on.