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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T07:08:02+00:00

I know there are multiple questions here on SO regarding this same issue already

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I know there are multiple questions here on SO regarding this same issue already and I’ve looked into them but didn’t quite get a satisfying answer. So here goes my question,

I have a form which consists of a few textboxes and checkboxes. It looks like this,

enter image description here

The user can select multiple checkboxes. I’m trying to insert the values(not the displaying text string) of those checkboxes into a MySQL table. It should look like this,

enter image description here

One Service ID(SID) can have multiple Locations(Loc_Code). Those location codes (CO, GQ) are the values of the checkboxes.

I’ve written this following code so far.

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<?php
require_once("db_handler.php");

$conn = iniCon();
$db = selectDB($conn);

/* Generating the new ServiceID */
$query = "SELECT SID FROM taxi_services ORDER BY SID DESC LIMIT 1";
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$last_id = $row["SID"];

$id_letter = substr($last_id, 0, 1);
$id_num = substr($last_id, 1) + 1;
$id_num = str_pad($id_num, 3, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);
$new_id = $id_letter . $id_num;

//Selecting locations
$query = "SELECT Loc_Code, Name FROM districts";
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn);

$count = mysql_num_rows($result);
?>

<?php
if(isset($_POST["savebtn"]))
{
    //inserting the new service information
    $id = $_POST["sid"];
    $name = $_POST["name"];
    $cost = $_POST["cost"];
    if($_POST["active"] == "on") $active = 1; else $active = 0;

    $query = "INSERT INTO taxi_services(SID, Name, Cost, Active) VALUES('$id', '$name', '$cost', '$active')";
    $result = mysql_query($query, $conn);

    //inserting the location details
    for($j = 0; $j < $count; $j++)
    {
        $loc_id = $_POST["checkbox2"][$j];
        $query = "INSERT INTO service_locations(SID, Loc_Code) VALUES('$id', '$loc_id')";
        $result5 = mysql_query($query, $conn);
    }

    if (!$result || !$result5)
    {
        die("Error " . mysql_error());
    }
    else
    {
?>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            alert("Record added successfully!");
        </script>
<?php
    }   
    mysql_close($conn); 
}
?>

<div id="serv">
<b>Enter a new taxi service</b>
<br/><br/>
    <form name="servForm" action="<?php $PHP_SELF; ?>" method="post" >
        <table width="300" border="0">
          <tr>
            <td>Service ID</td>
            <td><input type="text" name="sid" readonly="readonly" value="<?php echo $new_id; ?>" style="text-align:right" /></td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td>Name</td>
            <td><input type="text" name="name" style="text-align:right" /></td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td>Cost</td>
            <td><input type="text" name="cost" style="text-align:right" onkeypress="return isNumberKey(event)" /></td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td>Active</td>
            <td><input type="checkbox" name="active" /></td>
          </tr>
        </table>
</div>

<div id="choseLoc">
Locations <br/><br/>
    <table border="0">
        <?php
        $a = 0;
        while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
            {
            if($a++ %5 == 0) echo "<tr>";
            ?>
            <td align="center"><input type="checkbox" name="checkbox2[]" value="<?php echo $row['Loc_Code']; ?>" /></td>
            <td style="text-align:left"><?php echo $row["Name"]; ?></td>
        <?php
        if($a %5 == 0) echo "</tr>";
            }
        ?>
    </table>
</div>
<br/>
<div id="buttons">
    <input type="reset" value="Clear" /> <input type="submit" value="Save" name="savebtn" />
    </form>
</div>

</body>
</html>

It inserts the Service details correctly. But when it inserts location data, a problem like this occurs,

enter image description here

I selected 4 checkboxes and saved. The 4 location codes gets saved along with the service ID. But as you can see from the screenshot above, a bunch of empty rows gets inserted too.

My question is how can I stop this from happening? How can I insert the data from the checkboxes only I select?

Thank you.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    One way would be to only loop over the checkboxes that were submitted:

    //inserting the location details
foreach($_POST["checkbox2"] as $loc_id)
{
  $query = "INSERT INTO service_locations(SID, Loc_Code) VALUES('$id', '$loc_id')";
  $result5 = mysql_query($query, $conn);
}

    I reiterate here the SQL injection warning given above: you would be much better off preparing an INSERT statement and then executing it with parameters. Using PDO, it would look something like:

    //inserting the location details
$stmt = $dbh->prepare('
  INSERT INTO service_locations(SID, Loc_Code) VALUES(:id, :loc)
');
$stmt->bindValue(':id', $id);
$stmt->bindParam(':loc', $loc_id);
foreach($_POST["checkbox2"] as $loc_id) $stmt->execute();
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