Question

I’m a newbie to PHP and don’t know how to modify the syntax of this function so that it can be used to exclude several arrays instead of only one. This code automatically INSERTS every value that’s input in a form without having to specify the fields and excludes one array (called ‘submit’), and is a slightly modified version of code that I found at http://www.abeautifulsite.net/blog/2007/10/inserting-an-array-into-a-mysql-database-table/

I have several arrays which are being posted that I want to exclude from my INSERT function since they are either being processed and inserted separately or trigger where the user is redirected once the form is processed.

function mysql_insert_array($db, $data, $exclude = array()) { 
$fields = $values = array(); 
if( !is_array($exclude) ) $exclude = array($exclude); 
foreach( array_keys($data) as $key ) {
    if( !in_array($key, $exclude) ) {
        $fields[] = "`$key`";
        $values[] = "'" . mysql_real_escape_string($data[$key]) . "'";
    }
} 
$fields = implode(",", $fields);
$values = implode(",", $values); 
if( mysql_query("INSERT INTO `$db` ($fields) VALUES ($values)") ) {       
} else {
    return array( "mysql_error" => mysql_error() );
} 
}
$result = mysql_insert_array("db", $_POST, "submit");

Answer 1

The exclude argument could be an array of array:

    function mysql_insert_array($db, $data, $excludes = array()) { 
      $fields = $values = array(); 
      if( !is_array($excludes) ) $excludes = array($excludes); 

      foreach($excludes as $exclude ) {
        $data = array_diff_assoc($data, $exclude);
      } 

      foreach( array_keys($data) as $key ) {
        $fields[] = "`$key`";
        $values[] = "'" . mysql_real_escape_string($data[$key]) . "'";
      }

      $fields = implode(",", $fields);
      $values = implode(",", $values); 
      if( !mysql_query("INSERT INTO `$db` ($fields) VALUES ($values)") ) {       
        return array( "mysql_error" => mysql_error() );
      }
    } 

Then, you could use it like this :

$array1 = array('toto', 'titi', 'tata');
$array2 = array('submit', 'foo');

$parent_array = array ($array1, $array2);

$result = mysql_insert_array("db", $_POST, $parent_array);