I'm trying to create a form along the lines of the following (I am aware that this is not valid HTML, but it hopefully illustrates what and why I am trying to do this):
<form method="post" action="test.php">
<input type="text" name="teamName">
<br />Players:
<grouping name="players[]">
<input type="text" name="firstName"><br />
<input type="text" name="lastName"><br />
</grouping>
<input type="submit" value="submit">
</form>
Through javascript, I would then add the grouping element as many times as needed. When the form is submitted, I could then access the items in the grouping element as follows:
foreach ($players as $player) {
$fName = $player->firstName;
$lName = $player->lastName;
}
That is, before I start, I don't know how many players will be on the team, but I know what a player looks like. I want to keep this all on one screen, so that the user can add players to their team on one page, and I want to be able to add the grouping of fields as a group. However, I would also like that grouping to be stored as an array, instead of doing something like:
<form method="post" action="test.php">
<input type="text" name="teamName">
<br />Players:
<input type="text" name="firstName[]"><br />
<input type="text" name="lastName[]"><br />
<input type="submit" value="submit">
</form>
which would mean that I could iterate through the individual elements in the grouping, but not through the grouping as a whole.
Any ideas how I might accomplish this?
Looking at your structure, though, I'd recommend going for a more robust array structure:
foreach ($players as $i => $player) {
$fName = $player->firstName;
$lName = $player->lastName;
echo '<input type="text" name="players['.$i.'][firstName]" value="'.$fName.'" />';
echo '<input type="text" name="players['.$i.'][lastName]" value="'.$lName .'" />';
}
When you submit this, you'd get:
players => Array(
[0] => Array (
firstName => a name,
lastName => another name,
),
[1] => Array (
firstName => a name,
lastName => another name,
),
etc...
)
Alternatively, rather than generating $i in the foreach statement, you could do an incrementing $i++ in the last input field, but I find for debugging purposes it's often nice to know which index your using from the original array.
I recommend this approach over your question's example, as it also allows you to do a count/iterate through $_POST['players']
Hope this helps
This sounds like a job for: <fieldset>
wrap your <input> elements in a <fieldset> element, and possibly give the fieldset an ID, some classes, or whatever you'd like.
then make sure that the input names use the correct array structure:
players[NUMBER][firstName] and players[NUMBER][lastName] should work fine (NUMBER of course being replaced by an index).
Don't forget to give your <input> elements a <label> for accessibility.
Giving the <fieldset> a <legend> is a good idea as well.
Multiple ways of solving this:
1) create a counter $i = 0 outside of your loop and inside of it do $i++. Instead of naming firstName[] use firstName[<?php echo $i; ?>]
2) If it's literally just the first and the second name - you can use a single <input> and then parse it in php.
Good Luck
