Posted by ZeldorBlat on 02/05/06 01:54

Jim S. wrote:
> hey guys and gals,
> here is my problem:
> i have a form, and recently my crazy mind decided to make 5 select/menus
> that belong to the same field ("features"),(each select/menu has many
> options, that is why i chose the select menu not, an another way)
>
> SO: the options for "features" field are let us say: (menu value)
>
> smart 1, happy 2, crasy 3 , depressed 4, frustrated 5, lazy 6, dumb 7
>
> now, the user has to choose 4 from them,
>
> So: i made 5 select/menus to select from (each one at a time)
>
> so far so good, if u are still reading, am impressed and i really thank you
> :)
>
>
> now here is what i did:
> i named every select/menu "features[]"
> and i used implode to get the values to a variable $all like this:
>
> $all = implode(",", $HTTP_POST_VARS['features']);
>
>
> i succeeded to have the value ( for my example) 0,0,0,0,5,0,0
> now i want to get the value of $all in the database, (so i can spit it out
> later with an "echo" or something)
> i made a field in the database with ENUM, with the "list" inserted in it
> sequetially
>
> Question: am i doing it right, what am i doing wrong, and where can i go
> from there?
>
> if u have a better suggestion please do not hesitate to suggest with some
> "code"
>
> thanks
> Jim

Why not have a single select list that allows multiple selections?
Write your <select> tag like this: <select name="features[]"
multiple="multiple">. Now the user can select more than one. On the
page where you process the form, $_POST['features'] will be an array
containing each of the selections (like you had before).

I wouldn't implode the list before putting it in your database.
Instead you should normalize things as follows:

A table user (uid, name, etc.)
A table features (fid, name, etc)
A table userFeatures (uid, fid)

This does two things. To indicate that a user made a selection, insert
a row in userFeatures with the user's uid and the feature's fid. This
also gives you a list of the choices in your database somewhere so you
don't need to hard-code them on the pages to make the select lists.

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