Table Values to PHP (Ordering Important) [closed] - php

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I am currently trying to get values from tables I have in a webpage into a database using PHP. However, the order of the values inside each box is important, so I want the first box to be ranked 1 and the second box to be ranked 2 and so on... There is no limit to the number of items in each box. There may be as many as 100 or 0. Each item in each box is dragged from a bank of items into the table, which represents a topic. The tables are the output of the interface.
So example table:
Rank1
Rank2
Rank3
I've currently tried dumping the entire page once the user fills it in into a text file and parsing it from there but i'm looking for a more functional and practical way of doing it.

Answer 1

If I understand your goal correctly, you have two sections on your webpage. A word bank and a <table>. A user can drag and drop items from the word bank to a cell in your <table>. Next you want the order of the contents of the cell to be preserved when the data is saved to a database-table.
Given the description you have provided, it seems you may be new to using databases. It is not a problem but you will need to do some study on how databases work and how to use them.
Again, if I understand correctly, your <table> looks like the following:
| topic-1 | topic-2 | topic-3 |
-------------------------------
| ---A--- | ---J--- | ---V--- |
| ---B--- | ---J--- | ---X--- |
| ---C--- | NULL | ---Y--- |
| NULL- | NULL | ---Z--- |
To move this into a database you need to create a database, and some table, for example MyDataTable. Next that table may have three columns: id, contents, category.
Here is some info on Mysql Insert.
INSERT INTO MyDataTable(`id`, `contents`, `category`)
VALUES (1, A, Topic-1)
You will need to format that call to work correctly via php, but that is the general idea. In your php code you will need to iterate over the elements in the order you want, and you can use the id to refer to your order... Alternatively you could add another column to your database-table and have that refer to your order, which would allow you to use some other value, perhaps auto-increment, as the primary key.
I would recommend becoming comfortable with MySQL if you aren't already, before tackling your project's specific needs. Namely, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT and WHERE will almost certainly be necessary MySQL functions.
One resource I found very helpful in grasping MySQL is this book, SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming .
Using the phpMyAdmin page can be very helpful in debugging SQL queries, once the query syntax is correct, you can translate it to php and incorporate your dynamic variables. Also if you store your sql-syntax in php as $sql, using var_dump($sql) can also be a great help when debugging sql syntax.
In programming, iterate over, typically refers to creating a for-loop to iterate, or step through 1-by-1, each of the items of an array or similar container.
$MyArray = array();
$MyArray = GetTableContents(); //You have to write this function.
for ($idx = 0; $idx < count($MyArray); $idx++)
{
// do my stuff, like, Insert into my DB-table.
}
In order for the code above to work, you need to fill MyArray with the contents from your <table>. In the example code above, the $idx, could be used as your id.
In addition to MySQL, it seems it would also be worth your time to learn more about php programming. Read simple tutorials, how-to's, and books. There are numerous resources on the internet about php. One such example is here.
I hope this is helpful.