Question

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Get $_POST from multiple checkboxes

I’m a little new to web development and this is a problem (having completely stumped me) I feel has a simple solution, so I won’t beat around the bush trying to figure it out myself. I will also focus on the most important bits.

I have some PHP code that is outputting a table, a form and a checkbox next to each row. Each one of the checkboxes looks like this:

<input type="checkbox" name="data_id" value="1">
<input type="checkbox" name="data_id" value="2">
<input type="checkbox" name="data_id" value="3">

As well as the submit button:

<input type='submit' name='Submit' value='Submit'/>

Standard form setup, nothing special.

I’d like to get the checked items in an array, however when I retrieve the data from the form using $_POST:

if($_POST['data_id'])
    {
        var_dump($_POST['data_id']); //returns string
        print_r($_POST['data_id']); //shows only one checkbox value
    };

What exactly am I doing wrong that the variable is not being returned an array?

Answer 1

PHP’s form-to-array syntax requires [] in the element name:

<input type="checkbox" name="data_id[]" value="1">
                                    ^^