Question

I have a HTML table base invoice for collecting the details of a order. New table rows can be added or deleted to this as the user needs them. Table has columns like item name, type, color, unit price, qty. I have place <input> and <select> tags inside <td> tags to collect data.

I need to submit a complete invoice to a database. The problem I’m having is I’m not sure how to get input values to my $_POST variables since the number of <input> and <select> vary from time to time based on the items on the invoice.

I can give dynamic or static names to input fields based on the table row id when they are generated using javascript. But how can I collect these data in the submit end to my php arrays or variables?

This is one table row. All other are similar to this.

<tr class="table_row_blue">
                <td class="table_data_index">1</td>
                <td><select>
                    <option>Test</option>
                    </select></td>
                <td class="table_data_item"><select>   
                    <option>&nbsp;2GB&nbsp;</option>
                </select></td>
                <td><input type="text" id="price_field" size="6"></td> 
                <td><input type="text" id="qty_field" size="6"></td> 
                <td><span class="table_subtotal">125,200.00</span></td>

            </tr>

Please give me some ideas to implement my idea.

Answer 1

encapsulate all the varying parts in separate tables in the database. so you can store them separately and relate to each other with foreign keys.

also it’s a good idea to use array naming for you HTML inputs like

<input name="data[Invoice][field1]" />
<input name="data[Invoice][field2]" />

this gives you data, which is more structured and easy to iterate.