Form elements of the same name

[Incognito44]

In ASP if I have a form with elements of the same name I get the posted information for that element as

data1,data2,data3,data4

in PHP I only get Data1 or one value returned

I worked around by renaming the elements differently but is not really the solution that provides me with flexible code.

Does php return same named elements in one shot or just one element?
I'm testing on Windows 2000 with Apache, php4

[phpman]

what is the code?

you can only get them the same if they were an array.

[Incognito44]

//Simplified Form example
<form action>
<input type=text name=item value=1>
<input type=text name=item value=2>
<input type=text name=item value=3>
<input type=text name=item value=4>
</form>

In ASP I can go Items=request.form("item")

and Items will contain "1,2,3,4"

in PHP I only get a single value returned. I can't remember it is either "1" or "4" but not all.

I've tried to see if the data was in an array as in
below, but no luck.
echo $item(0)
echo $item(1)
echo $item(3)
echo $item(4)

[phpman]

you have to add them as array.

<input type=text name=item[] value=1>
<input type=text name=item[] value=2>
<input type=text name=item[] value=3>
<input type=text name=item[] value=4>

that is proper coding even for ASP. if it even work sin ASP. :P

so then you get them like this

echo $item[0];
echo $item[1];
echo $item[3];
echo $item[4];

doesn't make any since it you name then all the same value without making them an array.

[Incognito44]

Well as far as making sense I'm not the brains behind how this stuff works, all I know is that ASP returns same named elements in one long string seperated by a comma and PHP does not.
it actually is quite nice to just have a single named element as opposed to item(0), item(1) etc.
If I have have to later add another option to asp I just paste the element (in this case a checkbox) in the HTML form and I'm done, my asp code takes care of the parsing. IN PHP I have to go in a modify my code to know a new element index has been added...
Now what makes more sense?

[The Hobo]

PHP makes more sense. If I'm following what you're saying.

I know that if all my form values were returned in the same variable, seperated by commas, I'd hate it. How do you get out a single value? Would you have to split it into an array? Wouldn't it make sense to already have it in an array?

What if one of the values had a comma? What does it do then?

Or am I just not understanding anything?

[phpman]

Originally posted by Incognito44

Now what makes more sense?

php does, that way you know what is going on. ASP sounds stupid if you had to do that. and like Hobo said, what if the contents was a comma or some other character that blows that code out of the water?

in php you know exactly what you want and what should be there, in ASP it doesn't sound like you have that much control. maybe it is just me though.

[Phenix]

I came across this same "anomaly" when updating an HTML form that was handled by a Perl script. It's valid in HTML to give elements of the array the same name on the HTML side (the same way your ASP script handled it).

But PHP wants an explicit [] for each array element on the HTML side. Personally I think the PHP way is more intuitive. Unfortunately, if you change the form processing script(ing language), you have to know how the form was written.

[Incognito44]

Thanks Phenix,
That answered my question.

For those who want to know why it makes more sense to me "in this particular situation"
The form elements were checkboxes (sorry, no code blowing there--it's on or off, data or no data)
Since I already wrote a function to parse the commas adding a new checkbox to the group was as simple as adding it to the form....done
In php I have to update the code and the html-
Simpler and less work makes more sense to me...I'm open to alternate solution though....G

[The Hobo]

Why would you have to update any code in PHP?

for ($i = 0; $i < count($_POST['chk_values']); $i++) {
    //do something with $_POST['chk_values'][$i]
}

You can add as many checkboxes as you want and the loop will always work.

[Incognito44]

Being fairly new yto php and a bigi asp user-I'm used to posting single form elements and haven't had to do it as arrays in the past. Thanks for the info...G