User input from 3 textboxes to be inserted into PHP-array [duplicate] - php

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Closed 5 years ago.
I have an HTML-form with 3 inputs of type text and one input of type submit, where a name of an animal is to be inserted into each textbox. The data should then be inserted into a PHP-array.
This is my HTML-form:
<form action="Test.php" method="post" name="myForm" id="myForm">
<input type="text" placeholder="Enter animal one..." name="animal1" id="animal1">
<input type="text" placeholder="Enter animal two..." name="animal2" id="animal2">
<input type="text" placeholder="Enter animal three..." name="animal3" id="animal3">
<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="send" id="send">
</form>
And this is my much experimental PHP-code:
<?php
if (isset ($_POST["send"])) {
$farmAnimals = $_POST["animal1"];
$farmAnimals = $_POST["animal2"];
$farmAnimals = $_POST["animal3"];
}
// As a test, I tried to echo the saved data
echo $farmAnimals;
?>
This does not work, as the data doesn't magically turn into an array, unfortunately, which I thought it would.
I have also tried this:
<?php
if (isset ($_POST["send"])) {
$farmAnimals = $_POST["animal1", "animal2", "animal3"];
}
echo $farmAnimals;
?>
This gives me an error message. How can I insert this data into a PHP-array?

Answer 1

First initialize the $farmAnimals as array, then you can push elements
if (isset ($_POST["send"])) {
$farmAnimals = array();
$farmAnimals[] = $_POST["animal1"];
$farmAnimals[] = $_POST["animal2"];
$farmAnimals[] = $_POST["animal3"];
print_r($farmAnimals);
}

Answer 2

Try this:
$string = "";
foreach($_POST as $value){
$string .= $value . ",";
}
Or this:
$string = implode(',', $_POST);

Answer 3

If you change the text field names to animal[] then you have an array of animal names when it is posted
<form action='Test.php' method='post'>
<input type='text' placeholder='Enter animal one...' name='animal[]' />
<input type='text' placeholder='Enter animal two...' name='animal[]' />
<input type='text' placeholder='Enter animal three...' name='animal[]' />
<input type='submit' value='Submit' name='send' id='send'>
</form>
You can then process that array in php easily for whatever end purpose you have - the output of which would be like this:
Array
(
[animal] => Array
(
[0] => giraffe
[1] => elephant
[2] => rhinocerous
)
[send] => Submit
)
To access these animals as an array in their own right you could do:
$animals=array_values( $_POST['animal'] );

Answer 4

Try naming your input fields like this:
<form action="Test.php" method="post" name="myForm" id="myForm">
<input type="text" placeholder="Enter animal one..." name="animal[0]" id="animal1">
<input type="text" placeholder="Enter animal two..." name="animal[1]" id="animal2">
<input type="text" placeholder="Enter animal three..." name="animal[2]" id="animal3">
<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="send" id="send">
</form>
This way you be able to access those values in your PHP code like this:
if(isset($_POST["send"])) {
$farmAnimals = $_POST["animal"];
}
var_dump($farmAnimals);
// Array( [0] => Animal1, [1] => Animal2, [2] => Animal3 )
// Where Animal1,... are the values entered by the user.
// You can access them by $farmAnimals[x] where x is the desired index.
Tip: You can use empty() to check a variable for existance and if it has a "truthy" value (a value which evaluates to true). It will not throw an exception, if the variable is not defined at all. See PHP - empty() for details.
Futher reference about the superglobal $_POST array, showing this "array generating name" approach: https://secure.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.post.php#87650
Edit:
I just saw, that you actually overwrite your $farmAnimals variable each time. You should use the array(val1, val2, ...) with an arbitray amount of parameters to generate an numeric array.
If you prefer an associative array do this:
$myArray = array(
key1 => value1,
key2 => value2,
....
);
To append a value on an existing array at the next free index use this syntax:
// This array contains numbers 1 to 3 in fields 0 to 2
$filledArray = array(1,2,3);
$filledArray[] = "next item";
// Now the array looks like this:
// [0 => 1, 1 => 2, 2 => 3, 3 => "next item"]