Take table cell value into PHP post - php

Question

I'm having a problem adjusting the values being passed into $_POST from the table I have set up.
Here's the code that's being used to set up the table:
print "<form action=\"updateitem.php\" method=\"post\">\n";
print "<table border cellpadding = 3>\n";
print "<tr>\n";
print "<th>Menu item id</th>\n";
print "<th>Menu item name</th>\n";
print "<th>Menu</th>\n";
print "<th>Menu item price</th>\n";
print "</tr>\n";
while($info = mysql_fetch_array($results)){
$mi = explode("_",$info['meta_key']);
if ($mi[2] == "food")
$mi[2] = "takeout";
print "<tr>\n";
print "<td id=\"meta_id\">".$info['meta_id']."<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"meta_id".$i."\" value=\"".$info['meta_id']."\" /></td>\n";
print "<td>".$info['post_title']."</td>\n";
print "<td>".$mi[2]."</td>\n";
print "<td id=\"price\" contenteditable=\"true\">".$info['meta_value']."<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"meta_value".$i."\" value=\"".$info['meta_value']."\" /></td>\n";
print "</tr>\n";
$i++;
}
print "</table>\n";
print "<input type=\"Submit\" value=\"Update\" />\n";
print "</form>\n";
What I'm trying to do is that when someone changes the price cell, I want the updated price to be passed in the $_POST for PHP. Is that possible?

Answer 1

The contenteditable attribute is not going to help you here.
You have to use javascript to notice when that is changed and do something with it.
The simple answer is, you need to make the <input> field available to the user. So change the type="hidden" to type="text" or add another field that is not hidden for the user to interact with, and then the value will be passed back to your script in $_POST.
Suggested changes
print "<form action=\"updateitem.php\" method=\"post\">\n";
print "<table border cellpadding = 3>\n";
print "<tr>\n";
print "<th>Menu item id</th>\n";
print "<th>Menu item name</th>\n";
print "<th>Menu</th>\n";
print "<th>Menu item price</th>\n";
print "</tr>\n";
while($info = mysql_fetch_array($results)){
$mi = explode("_",$info['meta_key']);
if ($mi[2] == "food")
$mi[2] = "takeout";
print "<tr>\n";
print '<td id="meta_id">' . $info['meta_id'] . '<input type="hidden" name="meta_id[]" value="' . $info['meta_id'] . '" /></td>';
print '<td>'.$info['post_title'].'</td>';
print '<td>'.$mi[2].'</td>';
print '<td id="price">';
print '<input type="hidden" name="original_price[]" value="' . $info['meta_value'] . '" />';
print '<input type="text" name="price[]" value="' . $info['meta_value'] . '" />';
print '</td>';
print "</tr>\n";
$i++;
}
print "</table>\n";
print "<input type=\"Submit\" value=\"Update\" />\n";
print "</form>\n";
I took the liberty of changing the names ( name="name[]" ) to use arrays instead of ( name="name" . $i )
This will return the fields as arrays in the $_POST array
So $_POST[price] will itself be an array like so:
$_POST['price][0]
$_POST['price][1] // and so on
So you can process the changed prices as
foreach ( $_POST['price'] as $i => $price ) {
if ( $price != $_POST['original_price'][$i]) {
// We have a price change lets update the database
// using $_POST['meta_id'][$i] as the key to the database table ? I assume ??
}
}