forms - processing textarea and checkbox variables

Question

Alright, so I got my form to email most of the variables in php. However, my textarea variables show up blank and my textarea inputs print as "Array"

Here is a snippet from my form:

<label for="ProgramAudience">Intended Audience:</label>
                <span><input type="checkbox" name="ProgramAudience[]" value="AcademicAffairsFaculty" />Academic Affairs/Faculty</span>
                <span><input type="checkbox" name="ProgramAudience[]" value="StudentAffairsDevelopment" />Student Affairs/Development</span>
                <span><input type="checkbox" name="ProgramAudience[]" value="CommunityCollege" />Community College/2-Year Institutions</span>
                <span><input type="checkbox" name="ProgramAudience[]" value="GraduateStudents" />Graduate Students</span>
                <span><input type="checkbox" name="ProgramAudience[]" value="FourYearPublic" />Four-Year Public Institutions</span>
                <span><input type="checkbox" name="ProgramAudience[]" value="FourYearPrivate" />Four-Year Private Institutions</span>



<label for="ExpectedOutcome">Expected Learning Outcomes:</label>
                <label class="small">List 1-2 expected learning outcomes below. (As a result of attending this session, participants will...)</font></label>
                    <font size="1" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> ( You may enter up to 400 characters. )<br>
                <textarea name="message4" id="ExpectedOutcome" class="required" wrap="physical" rows="10" cols="35" onKeyDown="textCounter(this.form.message4,this.form.remLen,400);" onKeyUp="textCounter(this.form.message4,this.form.remLen,400);"></textarea>

Here is the part of the processing file:

$ProgramAudience = $_POST['ProgramAudience']; 
$ExpectedOutcome = $_POST['ExpectedOutcome']; 

...

$Body = "";
$Body .= "ProgramAudience: ";
$Body .= $ProgramAudience;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "ExpectedOutcome ";
$Body .= $ExpectedOutcome;

This is what the emailed result looks like:

From:

To: [email protected]

Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:10:17 -0400

Subject: Proposal Submission

First Name: miles

Last Name: me

Title: test

Institution: test

EmailFrom: [email protected]

Phone: 8157531503

Address: HSC 023A

City: DeKalb

State: IL

Zip: 60115

CoPresenter: adam

ProgramTitle:

ProgramType: Array

ProgramDescription:

ProgramOutline:

ProgramTopic: Array

ProgramAudience: Array

ExpectedOutcome

Experience:

AVEquipment:

Answer 1

Check your name attribute on the text area - that's the one PHP will use.

Checkboxes will only come through if they are checked, so make sure you check something. With a name with brackets, like "ProgramAudience[]", the $_POST['ProgramAudience'] variable will either be null or an array. You'll want to check if it's an array, and if so, loop through the contents to generate your email.

Answer 2

For the checkbox arrays, the processing script needed this:

$ProgramTitle = $_POST['ProgramTitle']; 
foreach($_POST['ProgramType']  as  $value)  {
$check_msg .= "Checked: $value\n";
} 

and this:

$Body .= "ProgramTitle: ";
$Body .= $ProgramTitle;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "ProgramType: ";
$Body .= $check_msg;