Multidimensional arrays to insert for one row - php

Question

I have three arrays that look like this:
ingredientQTY is the first input box in each row, measurements is the select/dropdown in each row, and ingredientsNAME is the last input box in each row. As you can see, there can be infinite numbers of ingredientQTY's, ingredientNAME's, and measurements.
When I send them to my php script, the data is in arrays like:
IngredientQTY
(
[0] => 5 //The first row
[1] => 5 //The next rows value
)
Measurements
(
[0] => Bunch //The first row
[1] => Bunch //The next rows value
)
IngredientName
(
[0] => 5 //The first row
[1] => 5 //The next rows value
)
I'm trying to upload them to a table called ingredients that has 3 columns: ingredientNAME, ingredientQTY, and measurements.
In my php script, I'm combining them into a multidimensional array, which is assigned to $ingredientsROW:
foreach($_POST as $key => $value) {
$value = $this->input->post($key);
$ingredientQTY = $this->input->post('ingredientQTY');
$measurements = $this->input->post('measurements');
$ingredientNAME = $this->input->post('ingredientNAME');
$ingredientsROW[] = array($ingredientQTY, $measurements, $ingredientNAME);
break;
}
My question is: How can I get group all the first row of form elements (which means the first ingredientQTY, the first measurements dropdown and the first ingredientNAME and insert them into a row?
The only way I could think of is to have one insert where I insert ingredientQTY, then look up the id of the row I just inserted and use two mysql updates to enter for the same row, but I'm pretty sure there is more efficient ways of going about this.

Answer 1

Would something like this work?
foreach($_POST['IngredientQTY'] as $index=>$qty)
mysql_query("insert into ingredients ".
"set IngredientQTY='".addslashes($qty)."'".
", measurements ='".addslashes($_POST['measurements'][$index])."'".
", ingredientNAME ='".addslashes($_POST['ingredientNAME'][$index])."');

Answer 2

Iterate through the data and create an array like this:
for ($i = 0, $count = count($ingredientQTY); $i < $count; $i++) {
$rows[] = array(
'QTY' => $ingredientQTY[$i],
'measurement' => $measurements[$i],
'name' => $ingredientNAME[$i]
);
}
With this array you can create the insert quite easily and insert whole rows.