Question

I should be able to figure this out, but I keep going in circles. I have a form with checkboxes. When the checkboxes are selected they tagged to be deleted.

I process those selected checkboxes with a foreach:

foreach (array_keys($_POST['checkboxselect']) as $k) {
    $str .= $k.',';
}

This is my lame attempt to put the list of videos together. The sql delete I’m using is:

DELETE FROM `videos` WHERE `video_name` IN ($str)

So I’m missing lots of things here. The $str needs to have:

1. Only one checkbox is returned so return string with quotes (i.e. “myvideo.mp4”)
2. Multiple checkboxes are selected so build a string with quotes and commas (i.e. “myvideo.mp4″,”myvideo2.mp4″,”myvideo3.mp4”)

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

Try using PHP’s implode:

// Init links
$mysqliLink = mysqli_connect('host', 'user', 'password') or die('Could not connect: ' . mysqli_error());

$mysqlLink = mysql_connect('host', 'user', 'password') or die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());

//-----
// Prep values for query
//-----

// Only pick one of the following depending upon the mysql library you are using

// If using mysql, passing the 2nd argument is not necessary, but for 
// clarity, adding it
$deleteNames = array_map('mysql_real_escape_string', array_keys($_POST['checkboxselect']), array_fill(0, count($_POST['checkboxselect']), $mysqlLink));

// If using mysqli
// This will ensure that $mysqliLink will be passed in as first arg for 
// every iteration satisfying the function signature
$deleteNames = array_map('mysqli_real_escape_string', array_fill(0, count($_POST['checkboxselect']), $mysqliLink), array_keys($_POST['checkboxselect']));
//-----


// Because you are passing strings, we need to ensure each is wrapped in quotes
$deleteNames = "'" . implode("','", $deleteNames) . "'";

// Construct query using implode
$sql = sprintf('DELETE FROM `videos` WHERE `video_name` IN (%s)', $deleteNames); 

— Update —

Using Joomla APIs:

$db = &JFactory::getDBO();

// Localize and sanitize each individual value
foreach (array_keys($_POST['checkboxselect']) as $element) {
    $deleteNames[] = $db->quote($element);
}

// Because you are passing strings, we need to ensure each is wrapped in quotes
// No longer true because $db->quote taking care of quoting out each name for us
$deleteNames = implode(',', $deleteNames);

// Construct query using implode
$sql = sprintf('DELETE FROM `videos` WHERE `video_name` IN (%s)', $deleteNames);