Question

I have a piece of code that I’m not happy with at all:

// Search for checkboxes ('chk-1','chk-2','chk-3'...)
foreach ($_POST as $key => $val) {
    if (substr($key, 0,3) == 'chk') {  
        $appObj->cats[] = intval(substr($key,4,strlen($key)));
}

I really don’t like this as $_POST can contain upwards of 40+ variables and I am already applying logic to all other posted vars.

Has anyone got any ideas / solutions to achieving the above without cycling through every $_POST var?

Answer 1

The only way how you could avoid cycling trough all items and using strncmp, strpos or substr is building check-boxes as one array (lets have $key = 7 as example):

<input type="checkbox" name="chk[7]" />

And php:

foreach( $_POST['chk'] as $key => $val){
    $appObj->cats[] = $key;
}

This would would, but it may create key gaping:

$_POST['chk'] = array(
  0 => 'ON',
  1 => 'ON',
  7 => 'ON',
);

Which may cause problems when someone will try processing data with for loop.

Better approach is this one:

<input type="checkbox" name="chk[]" value="7" />
<input type="checkbox" name="chk[]" value="57" />
<input type="checkbox" name="chk[]" value="1231" />

And php:

foreach( $_POST['chk'] as $arrayKey => $key){
    $appObj->cats[] = $key;
}