Question

I am stuck on a problem for a PHP assignment I have. I created a PHP script to generate form inputs, and I must take the data from the input and insert it into a text document. So I wrote the code that generates two inputs and a function that will write the data to the text document. However, my text document appears blank. How would I properly define a function that takes multiple values from text inputs and inserts them into a text document? Here is my code so far:

<form method='post'> 
<table border='0' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='5'>
  <tr>
    <td><h2>Item</h2></td>
    <td><h2>Amount</h2></td>
  </tr>
<?php

for($row=1; $row<5;$row++)
    {

    $item_name='item_name'.$row;    
    $item_value = $_POST[$item_name];

    $amount_name='amount_name'.$row;    
    $amount_value = $_POST[$amount_name];



echo 
"<tr>
    <td><input type='text' name='$item_name' value='$item_value'  /></td>
    <td><input type='text' name='$amount_name' value='$amount_value' /></td>
";  

    if (!empty($amount_value))
    {
            if(is_numeric($amount_value))
            {
            $total = $total + $amount_value;
            }
            else {
        echo    
            "<td class='bad'>Amount Invalid: $amount_value</td>";
            $error_count++;
            }
    }


echo"   
  </tr>
";

    }
?>  

<tr>
    <td colspan='2'>
    <input name='' type='submit' value='Submit' />
    </td>
</table>
<?php
    if ($error_count > 0)
    {
    echo "<br /><span class='bad' />Errors: $error_count</span>";
    }
    else
    {
    echo "<br />Total: $total";
    }
    if ($error_count == 0)
    {
    addData();
    }


    //Function
    function addData()
    {
    $myFile = "bills.txt";
    $fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
    $stringData = $amount_value;
    fwrite($fh, $stringData);
    $stringData = $item_value;
    fwrite($fh, $stringData);
    fclose($fh);
    }   

?>
</form>

Answer 1

When you assign a value to $item_value at the top of the code, you are creating a variable called $item_value within the scope of your php tag. In the function addData(), there is no variable called $item_value, so $stringData = $item_value creates a variable $stringData with a value equal to the new variable item_value with a value of null. Pass the data to your method then you will be able to access it.

Try calling it like:

addData($item_value);

Then change the method to:

function addData($item_value){