Women in Technology

Article:		Autofilled PHP Forms
Subject:		Problem with using array input names
Date:		2006-07-07 16:12:06
From:		GavinAndresen
Response to: Problem with using array input names
I was wondering when somebody would notice that it doesn't handle PHP's built-in support for arrays of form fields. On a scale of 1-10, that will be about a '6' to fix; it will involve changes to the fillInInputTag() and fillInTextArea() (and maybe fillInSelect) functions, where they fetch the "name" attribute (gotta be smarter about name="foo[]", and keep track of which array index is being parsed, and find the corresponding value in $request).

Showing messages 1 through 1 of 1.

• Problem with using array input names
  2006-07-11 00:21:32  sdave1284 [View]
  
  
  Well, I don't use it everywhere. I only use it for text fields. So I made the following addition to fillInInputTag()(Note: i'm not very experienced with the best solutions to these problems, nor do I use regular expressions often):
  
  $num_of_matches = preg_match("/([\w]+)(\W([\d]+)\W)/", $name, $name_match);
  
  $name_arr = $name_match[1];
  $name_index =$name_match[3];
  
  if($num_of_matches == 0) {
  if (!array_key_exists($name, $this->request))
  return $tag;
  return fillInFormHelper::replaceAttributeVal($tag, 'value', $this->request[$name]);
  } else {
  if (!array_key_exists($name_arr, $this->request))
  return $tag;
  
  return fillInFormHelper::replaceAttributeVal($tag, 'value', $this->request[$name_arr][$name_index]);
  }
  
  In my input names, I add a index number instead of just using name[]. I think this gives me better control, plus I can use the above method to fill in the text fields. Now, I just need to figure out how to do the same thing for the validateForm function....
  
  Your scripts have made me life creating version 2 of our website 100X easier. Expansion will be much easier as new fields are added to the forms and database backend! Thanks and feel free to comment on what I did above...
  
  Dave