Question

Numeric values..

$price = $_POST['price'];
$zipcode = $_POST['zipcode'];

How can I filter two fields passing through a single select tag field called category_id that uses the explode() to recieve the values from this category_id field.

Form

    <?php echo '<label for="Category">Category:</label>
<select name="category_id" size="1" ><br />';


$sql = "SELECT id, name FROM category ORDER BY name";

$rs = mysql_query($sql);

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rs))
{
echo "<option value=\"".$row['name']."$".$row['id']."\">".$row['name']."</option>\n  ";
}


echo '</select>';

the way I receive the category_id field with explode but don’t know how to filter it since it is a numeric and data field at the same time.

$option = explode("$", $_POST['category_id']); 

enter code here

Answer 1

Are you just trying to retrieve the category name and ID from the posted, $ delimited category_id field?

If so, then this should do it

$option = explode("$", $_POST['category_id']);
$name = $option[0];
$id   = $option[1];

I would be more inclined to just set the ID in the <option> value attribute and fetch the name from the database or a pre-fetched associative array.

Update

If you’re wanting to validate that field, you could try something like

if (!preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z0-9]+\$\d+$/', $_POST['category_id'])) {
    // not valid
}

I wouldn’t attempt to filter out invalid characters on that field. Validation and error conditions are more concise.