insert two kinds of array in the same table

Question

i have an example here of two arrays from the form,

<input type="text" name="children[]" />
<input type="text" name="age[]" />

my problem is to insert the value above in the same table like

insert into childTable(children,age) values('children[]','age[]')

it's in the form of array coz i don't know how many children to input.. can u help me to solve this???? any answers will be highly appreciated...thank you!!!

Answer 1

I think you need a for loop.

Pseudo code:

for(int i = 0; i < children.Length; i++)
{
    insert into childTable(child, age) values(children[i], ages[i])
}

Answer 2

The data from your form will be accessible in PHP in the $_POST variable (or $_GET, but you should probably use $_POST, eg: <form method="post">).

The first thing I usually do after designing a form, is to post it back to the script and add this line:

print_r($_POST);

This will show you the structure of the data you're working with. In your case it will look something like this:

array(
    "children" => array(
        0 => "Bobby",
        1 => "Mary",
        2 => "Janey"
    ),
    "age" => array(
        0 => 8,
        1 => 12,
        2 => 7
    )
);

(I assume there's a corresponding age field for each children field, yeah?)

Therefore it's just a matter of looping through the array thusly:

$numKids = count($_POST['children']);
$values = array();

for ($i = 0; i < $numKids; ++$i) {
    $values[] = "('" . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['children'][$i]) . "'"
              . ", " . intval($_POST['age'][$i]) . ")";
}
$sql = "INSERT INTO `childTable` (`children`, `age`) "
     . "VALUES " . implode(",", $values);

Answer 3

Multiple value form fields aren't really intended to be used for matching fields like that. There's no guarantee provided that multiple $_POST['children'] and $_POST['age'] values will end up submitted in the same order, or even with the same number of elements.

You'd be better off using a series of numbered fields, like:

Child 1:    
<input name="children_1" />
<input name="age_1">
<br />
Child 2:
<input name="children_2" />
<input name="age_2" />
...

Then use code such as this to iterate through submitted values:

$i = 1;
while (isset($_POST['children_' . $i]) && isset($_POST['age_' . $i])) {
    if ($_POST['children_' . $i] != '') {
        mysql_query('insert into childTable (children, age) values (\''
           . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['children_' . $i]) . '\', \''
           . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['age_' . $i]) . '\')');
    }
    $i++;
}

Of course in the real world, you'll also want to add some validation to check that these values make sense before you insert them into your database.