Question

I currently have a table called paper, which holds all the information for each paper that a user uploads to my system. I also have a table called paper_topics; this is meant to hold the paper_id and its topic_id from a table called topic. However I’m not sure how I can use PHP to allow the user to select multiple topics and then submit them along with the paper_id to the paper_topics table.

Here is the code I have for uploading the paper.

if(!is_dir("paper")) {
mkdir("paper");

}
function savedata(){
    global $_FILES, $_POST, $putItAt;
    $sql = "INSERT INTO `internetcoursework`.`paper` (
    `paper_id`, 
    `username`,
    `title`, 
    `abstract`, 
    `filelocation`, 
    `date_added`) 
    VALUES (NULL,'".mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['username'])."' , '".mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['title'])."',
    '".mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['abstract'])."', '".mysql_real_escape_string($putItAt)."', CURDATE());";
    mysql_query($sql);

    }
$putItAt = "paper/".basename($_FILES['uploadedfile']['name']);
if(move_uploaded_file($_FIleS['uploadedfile']['tmp_name'],$putItAt)) {
savedata();
header("location: listfiles.php");
echo "you have succesfully uploaded";

}else { 
if(copy($_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name'],$putItAt)) {
savedata();
    header("location: listfiles.php");
    } else {
        echo "you totally failed";

        }
        }


?>
'

Answer 1

If I understand your request correctly (“select multiple topics and then submit them along with the paper_id to the paper_topics table”) the basic idea is to add a multi select form element to your form (like this http://onlinetools.org/tricks/using_multiple_select.php), then use that posted value to insert rows into the paper_topics table. You’ll need to insert the paper and get the paper id first ( http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-insert-id.php )

Does that answer your question?