Question

I’m trying to create a value list in ColdFusion. Basically, I want the users to be able to enter their fellow band members into individual fields. Then when submitted, any value which is present is stored into my database as a string rather than individual text values. When retrieving it from the database, run through it and use the comma as a separator and individually split the values again. On paper and in my head it sounds simple but I can’t get my head round it. Any help would be appreciated 🙂

Answer 1

If you really want to go with that solution you could simply use listToArray+cfloop or just cfloop to get the individual names:

<CFSET list_names = "John ,Luke, Bob" /> <!--- this should be the value from your db field --->
<CFSET array_names = listtoarray(list_names) />

<CFLOOP array="#array_names#" index="name">
    #name# is in the band<br />
</CFLOOP>

OR directly use the list and loop over it:

<CFSET list_names = "John ,Luke, Bob" /> <!--- this should be the value from your db field --->

<CFLOOP list="#list_names#" index="name">
    #name# is in the band<br />
</CFLOOP>

But … I would save the band member names in a separate table – such as:

Table bands:

| id | bandname  |
+----+-----------+
| 1  | The Hives |

Table bands_members:

| band_id | name                   |
+---------+------------------------+
|   1     | Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist |
|   1     | Nicholaus Arson        |
|   1     | Vigilante Carlstroem   |