Displaying Data from mysql table - php

Question

I have created this form using the while loop so that i dont have to make 28 text field ... but when i submit the data into my mysql database it works well but how to display the data back to my form for edit and update .. when i type a value to a text field (EX - submitted data from mysql in emp_name field) then it repeated 4 times in the text field .... i know it is happening because of loop but is there any way that i can display multiple data in each text field for updating after submitting data by the user as normal ....
my form.php
<form action="userdata.php" name="frmAdd" method="post">
<table width="80%" border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" class="forms">
<tr>
<td width="5"> <div align="center">NO</div></td>
<td width="91"> <div align="center">Employer's NAME</div></td>
<td width="160"> <div align="center">COUNTRY</div></td>
<td width="198"> <div align="center">POSITION</div></td>
<td width="70"> <div align="center">FROM</div></td>
<td width="70"> <div align="center">TO</div></td>
<td width="70"> <div align="center">SALARY</div></td>
<td width="70"> <div align="center">REASONS FOR LEAVING</div></td>
</tr>
<?php for($i=1;$i<=4;$i++) { ?>
<tr>
<th width="5"> <div align="center"><? echo $i . "."; ?></div></th>
<td><input type="text" name="emp_name<?=$i;?>" size="25" value="submitted data from mysql"></td>
<td><input type="text" name="emp_country<?=$i;?>" size="10"></td>
<td><input type="text" name="emp_pos<?=$i;?>" size="10"></td>
<td><input type="text" name="emp_frm<?=$i;?>" size="5"></td>
<td><input type="text" name="emp_to<?=$i;?>" size="5"></td>
<td><input type="text" name="emp_sal<?=$i;?>" size="5"></td>
<td><input type="text" name="emp_lev<?=$i;?>" size="25"></td>
</tr>
<?php } ?>
</table>
</br>
<input type="submit" name="doHis" value="Save Employment History">
<input type="hidden" name="hdlfrm" value="<?=$i;?>">
</form>
and my userdata.php
if($_POST['doHis'] == 'Save Employment History')
{
try{
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=dbname", "user", "pass");
}
catch(PDOException $pe)
{
die('Connection error, because: ' .$pe->getMessage());
}
for($i=1;$i<=$_POST["hdlfrm"];$i++){
if($_POST["emp_name$i"] != ""){
$sql = "INSERT INTO emp_table (emp_name, emp_country, emp_pos, emp_frm, emp_to, emp_sal, emp_lev)
VALUES (:emp_name, :emp_country, :emp_pos, :emp_frm, :emp_to, :emp_sal, :emp_lev)";
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
$stmt->bindParam(':emp_name', $_POST["emp_name$i"]);
$stmt->bindParam(':emp_country', $_POST["emp_country$i"]);
$stmt->bindParam(':emp_pos', $_POST["emp_pos$i"]);
$stmt->bindParam(':emp_frm', $_POST["emp_frm$i"]);
$stmt->bindParam(':emp_to', $_POST["emp_to$i"]);
$stmt->bindParam(':emp_sal', $_POST["emp_sal$i"]);
$stmt->bindParam(':emp_lev', $_POST["emp_lev$i"]);
$stmt->execute();
echo "Save Done. Click <a href='phpMySQLListRecord.php'>here</a> to view.";
}
}
}
and here is the snapshot

Answer 1

The problem you have is your data model - you are saving employment history, but for who? It needs to have an employee_id somewhere to say who this data belongs to, and join it to a table that saves the employee_table data. Next you need to have a unique ID on the emp_table to identify each row, which you can use instead of your $i index.
TABLE
history_id INT autoincrement | employee_id INT | emp_name VARCHAR | your other fields....
SELECT
SELECT history_id, emp_name, ... FROM emp_history where employee_id = ?
You can then loop over the results and use the history_id to identify the row that the data belongs to to update it. Submitting multiple fields with the same name will be an array you can iterate over, so you don't need to use a unique field name for each.
As a side note, you probably want to use isset($_POST["key"]) instead of $_POST["key"] != "" to check if a field was submitted.