Question

I have a list of different items within a select multiple list and I want to auto-append to a form that a user submits.

HTML of category multiple select list:

<select name="category[]" size="4" multiple="multiple" id="group">
    <option value='7'>Faculty</option>
    <option value='8'>Staff</option>
    <option value='6'>Students</option>
</select> 

I want to do something like:

<input type="hidden" name="category[7,8]" />

This will automatically assign the submission to the appropriate selected list items from within category[], without them ever seeing it.

This is stored within a database, so I need to accomplish it this way.

I know this does not work, but this should give you an idea of what I am trying to do.

Answer 1

A successful multiple-select control just gets submitted as having multiple values. E.g., if you selected “Faculty” and “Staff” in your list, what gets submitted is something like:

category[]=7&category[]=8

You can replicate this (at least in Firefox, haven’t tested elsewhere) with two hidden inputs:

<input name="category[]" value="7" type="hidden"/>
<input name="category[]" value="8" type="hidden"/>