Submitting a php table with input boxes - php

Question

I've really been racking my brain with this. I'll try to explain it to the best of my ability. It is mainly a data entry form.
First, there are three variables to start with. One is an array of regions (NYC, DC, etc) and the other to is a starting date (ex: 01/01/2012) and an ending date (ex: 1/15/2012)
In previous pages, the user selected the number of regions, selected the starting date to start recording, and the ending date. The intent is to enter 'points' and the dates are basically by week.
This is what the form is supposed to look like: http://i.imgur.com/9XflP2Z.png
In the boxes aside from the first column and first row, they are all input boxes. So, each input box is associated with the value at each end of the table (for example, the box next to NYC and under 01/01/2012 would enter data for NYC in the date range from 01/01/2012 to 01/08/2012).
My question is: How do I go about building this? Should I use a big 2d array? How would the submit button know which input boxes correspond to which date/region? My initial thought is maybe a hidden value that's like $array[0][x], $array[x][0], but I'm not sure.
I'm not really good at explaining, so I apologize in advance if anyone can't understand what I'm asking.

Answer 1

Try this:
// hard coding these values for example
// but for OP's case these might be coming from a previous page
$date_array = Array("01/01/2012", "01/08/2012", "01/15/2012");
$region_array = Array("NYC", "DC");
Now generate that form/table in your image like this:
<form name="test_form" id="test_form" action="submit_form.php" method="POST">
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td></td>
<?php
foreach ($date_array as $date){
echo "<td>".$date."</td>";
}
?>
</tr>
<?php
foreach ($region_array as $region){
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>".$region."</td>";
foreach ($date_array as $date){
echo "<td><input type=\"text\" name=\"".$region."_".$date."\"></td>";
}
echo "</tr>";
}
?>
</table>
<input type="submit" name="submit">
</form>
now for submit_form.php:
if (isset($_POST['submit'])){
foreach ($_POST as $k=>$v){
if ($k != "submit"){
// split the form input on _
$input = explode("_", $k);
echo "<BR>City: " . $input[0];
echo "<BR>Date: " . $input[1];
echo "<BR>Value: " . $v;
}
}
}

Answer 2

This is a variant on a commonly asked question.
In principle the foreach statement is perhaps the best option. pseudocode:
Collate all possible date ranges into a single array (array_merge, array_unique, array_sort) to generate your headers
foreach($region as $dates)
{
display the button for $date['startdate'] if is in_array of dates;
display the button for $date['enddate'] if is in_array of dates;
repeat...
}
The big problem you are going to have is dealing with the layout. The obvious solution (at the risk of ire hereon) is to use an HTML table. This is simple and automatically adjusts itself.
$nextline="<TR>";
if(is in_array($datetotest,$listofdates))
{
$nextline.="<TD><CODE FOR BUTTON></TD>";
}
else
{
$nextline.="<TD><BR></TD>";
}
Your alternative (and probably slicker) solution is to enclose all your buttons in a suitable span or other tag and neatly arrange them using CSS. This gives you more layout options but can be a bit of a headache with arbitrarily large datasets.