Question

In simple terms I have a form which has three identical entry fields. The names are different; however, when posted they have the same structure just different name prefix (ie three systems have different name prefixes: they would be windowstitle, mactitle, linuxtitle etc).

Currently I have a process that will only work one namesake out ie windowstitle (if the form is filled out, of course)

The code looks something like this:

<?php
$title = $_POST['windowstitle'];
//validate info or redirect
if ($title != "" ) {
    $title = mysql_real_escape_string($title);
    $sql = "insert into newwindows (title) values ('$title');
    $result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("Could not insert data into DB: " . mysql_error());
?>

Also the form block looks something like this

<form action="newuserprocess.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<div class="form">
    <h3>Windows</h3>

    <!-- title of system name -->
    <p><label for="windowstitle"> edition of system </lable></p>
    <input type="text" name="windowstitle"  size=20 /><br />
    </div>
    <div class="form">
    <h3>Mac</h3>

    <!-- title of system name -->
    <p><label for="mactitle"> edition of system </lable></p>
    <input type="text" name="mactitle"  size=20 /><br />
    </div>
<p><input type="submit" id="submit" class="bigbutton" value="Upload" /></p>
</form>

However, that leaves other forms left out with the only difference being the db I wanted entered and the post value prefix different.

So I came up with what I thought was a clever solution:

<?php
$arr = array('windows', 'mac', 'linux');
foreach ($arr as &$value) {
    $title = $_POST['$valuetitle'];
    //validate info 
    if ($title != "" ) {
        $title = mysql_real_escape_string($title);
        $sql = "insert into new$value (title) values ('$title');
        $result = mysql_query($sql) or die ("Could not insert data into DB: " . mysql_error());
    }
?>

However, this does not work. I know partly why; because '' makes the variable appear as is, thus my $_Post will always come back as $value. Another reason is the same with my new$value database name. What is the proper format for this? How do I make this work?

Answer 1

you probably want

$title = $_POST[$value . 'title'];

and

$sql = "insert into new$value (title) values ('$title')";