Question

I am trying to take input from a form, add it to an array, and print_r that array to the screen.

My problem is that the input from the form only replaces the first (and only) element in the array.

<form action="" method="POST">
    <input type="text" name="text" />
    <input type="submit" name="sub"/>
</form>

<?php
    $a = array();

    if( isset($_REQUEST['text']) && !empty($_REQUEST['text'])){
        array_push($a, $_REQUEST['text']);
        print_r($a);
    }
?>

One theory of mine is that $a keeps getting re-assigned on the first line of PHP code ($a = array();), but I’m not sure how to fix it. I have looked around, but can’t find an answer.

Answer 1

You are correct. The array does get reinitialized each time the form is posted. What you’ll want to do is have your array as a more persistent data source.

1. You might consider using a session and the $_SESSION variable.

session_start();
if (!is_array($_SESSION['a'])){
  $_SESSION['a'] = array();
}
$_SESSION['a'][] = $_REQUEST['text'];

1. You might also consider writing this data to a small text file that you could then read at the start of the script.

2. Another option would be to write the data to a $_COOKIE.