POST an array from an HTML form without javascript

Question

I have a form that is a little complex and I am hoping to simplify the server-side (PHP) processing by natively POSTing an array of tuples.

The first part of the form represents a User:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Address
• etc

The second part of the form represents a Tree:

• Fruit
• Height
• etc

The problem is that I need to be able to POST multiple Trees for a single User in the same form. I would like to send the information as a single User with an array of Trees but this might be too complex to do with a form. The only thing that comes to mind is using javascript to create some JSON message with a User object and an array of Tree objects. But it would be nice to avoid javascript to support more users (some people have scripts turned off).

Answer 1

check this one out.

<input type="text" name="firstname">
<input type="text" name="lastname">
<input type="text" name="email">
<input type="text" name="address">

<input type="text" name="tree[tree1][fruit]">
<input type="text" name="tree[tree1][height]">

<input type="text" name="tree[tree2][fruit]">
<input type="text" name="tree[tree2][height]">

<input type="text" name="tree[tree3][fruit]">
<input type="text" name="tree[tree3][height]">

it should end up like this in the $_POST[] array (PHP format for easy visualization)

$_POST[] = array(
    'firstname'=>'value',
    'lastname'=>'value',
    'email'=>'value',
    'address'=>'value',
    'tree' => array(
        'tree1'=>array(
            'fruit'=>'value',
            'height'=>'value'
        ),
        'tree2'=>array(
            'fruit'=>'value',
            'height'=>'value'
        ),
        'tree3'=>array(
            'fruit'=>'value',
            'height'=>'value'
        )
    )
)

Answer 2

You can also post multiple inputs with the same name and have them save into an array by adding empty square brackets to the input name like this:

<input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment1"/>
<input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment2"/>
<input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment3"/>
<input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment4"/>

If you use php:

print_r($_POST['comment']) 

you will get this:

Array ( [0] => 'comment1' [1] => 'comment2' [2] => 'comment3' [3] => 'comment4' )