Question

what I’m trying to do is run a select statement for each answer to select the answer in the database where the questionID = $i and the userID = $userID so I have the query like this set up so far but not sure what I’m missing or am I right and not missing anything? Also no matter what i do both fields have values but I’m still getting the error message that I need to fill out both form fields.

<?php 
                        $i = 1;
                        while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result, MYSQLI_ASSOC)) {
                        ?>
                            <dl>

                                <dt style="width: 190px;"><label for="answer[<?php echo $row['id']; ?>]"><?php echo $row['question'] ?></label></dt>
                                <dd><input type="text" name="answer<?php echo $i ?>[<?php echo $row['id']; ?>]" size="54" /></dd>

                            </dl>
                        <?php
                        ++$i;
                        }
                        ?>

if (empty($_POST['answer1'][$i]) || trim($_POST['answer1'][$i])=="") {$errors = "yes";}
if (empty($_POST['answer2'][$i]) || trim($_POST['answer2'][$i])=="") {$errors = "yes";}

// Error checking, make sure all form fields have input
if ($errors == "yes") {

    // Not all fields were entered error
    $message = "You must enter values to all of the form fields!";

    $output = array('errorsExist' => true, 'message' => $message);

} else {

    $userID = mysqli_real_escape_string($dbc,$_POST['userID']);
    $answer1 = mysqli_real_escape_string($dbc,$_POST['answer1'][$i]);
    $answer2 = mysqli_real_escape_string($dbc,$_POST['answer2'][$i]);

    $query = "SELECT * FROM manager_users_secretAnswers WHERE questionID = '".$questionID."' AND userID = '".$userID."'";
    $result = mysqli_query($dbc,$query);
    echo $query;

Answer 1

You can have a problem with php type autoquessing. Let suppose thatyou have questions with ids: 3,5,7,8 then you are using:

 empty($_POST['answer1'][$i])

$_POST[‘answer1’][3] so you are fetching third element of array.

So I suggest to use not array notation, but:
For input name: answer|${id} or answer_${id} instead of answer[$id]