Question

Is there a better way to process a form where I need to save a link and link text against a language and company?

The example below works, but I think it is hard work.

I have added the language and company id to the key of the link and link text fields as a way of grouping them together and passing the other information through to PHP and into the DB.

$newlinks = array();
foreach($_POST as $post_key => $post_value) {
  if (substr($post_key, 0, 7) == 'newlink') {
    $posted_link = explode('_', $post_key);
    $newlinks[$posted_link[1]][$posted_link[2]][$posted_link[0]] = $post_value;
    $newlinks[$posted_link[1]][$posted_link[2]]['language_id'] = $posted_link[1];
    $newlinks[$posted_link[1]][$posted_link[2]]['company_id'] = $posted_link[2];

  }
}

foreach($newlinks as $newlinklang) {
  foreach($newlinklang as $newlink) {
    if ($newlink['newlink'] != '' && $newlink['newlinkname'] != '') {
      $sql = "
        INSERT
          INTO
        ".$db_prefix."catalogue_links (
          link,
          link_name,
          language_id,
          company_id
        ) VALUES (
          '".$newlink['newlink']."',
          '".$newlink['newlinkname']."',
          '".$newlink['language_id']."',
          '".$newlink['company_id']."'
        ";
    }
  }
}

And the HTML

<input type="text" name="newlink_1_1" value="" />
<input type="text" name="newlinkname_1_1" value="" />

There can be multiple languages and companies displayed on one page.

Answer 1

Use something[] as the field name. Then PHP will create an array in $_POST['something'] (or $_GET, and $_REQUEST – obviously) which you can use without ugly substring comparisons.

You could also specify array indexes in the field name (name="something[42]"). This might be a good idea if you have multiple fields which belong together. While the order is supposed to be correct anyway (so you can foreach($_POST['field1'] as $idx => $val) and use _POST['field2'][$idx]) it might be safer or at least more intuitive for someone reading the code if the indexes are also in the HTML code.