Question

I’m developing a site using the CakePHP framework. I have a form which shows a list of entities, with a tickbox for each one allowing you to select it. You then press a button at the bottom of the form saying “Edit selected”.

My usual approach is to give each checkbox input the same name (e.g. row_id) and use the primary ID as the input’s value. However, when you submit the form, CakePHP only seems to return one of the checkbox’s values to the controller in $this->params['url'], rather than any kind of list like I’d expect.

Any tips on the right way to handle this, so that I can find out which rows were ticked?

Answer 1

If you’re using the FormHelper, the easiest way is to create your fields like this:

echo $form->input('ModelName.0.row_id', /* snip */)
echo $form->input('ModelName.1.row_id', /* snip */)

Etc.. you get the point. If it’s a dynamic list, there always the for loop.

When the form is POSTed, this should give you a server side array like this ($this->data):

array
(
    ['ModelName'] => array
    (
        [0] => array
        (
            [row_id] => value
        ),
        [1] => array
        (
            [row_id] => value
        )
    )
)

Then you can use the Set utility class to extract your IDs (and mess with your data:))