How to count a dynamic HTML form input array with PHP? - php

Question

I have a button on a page that when a user pushes it, it creates another "Contact" field on the page. The Contact field allows them to add a new contact to their profile. Also, they can click the button as many times as they want, and it will create that many "Contact" fields.
The problem though is that I am having a hard time figuring how many "Contact" fileds have been added. Here is some HTML that is generated when the button is clicked:
<div class="item">
<label for="in-1v">First Name <span>*</span></label>
<div class="text">
<input type="text" id="in-1-0" name="member[0][fname]" value="" />
</div>
</div>
<div class="item">
<label for="in-2-0">Last Name <span>*</span></label>
<div class="text">
<input type="text" id="in-2-0" name="member[0][lname]" value="" />
</div>
</div>
Each time the button is clicked, name="member[0][lname]" will become name="member[1][lname]" and will continue to increment each time the button is clicked. As stated earlier, the user can do this as many times as they want on the page.
I am using PHP to loop through the multidimensional array:
$array = $_POST['member'] ;
foreach($array as $array_element) {
$fname = $array_element['fname'];
$lname = $array_element['lname'];
}
How can I use PHP to determine how many fileds have been added so I can loop through them?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You can simply get a count like so:
$count = count($_POST['member']);
You could also then modify your loop to look like this:
// First check to see if member is set and is a valid array
if (!empty($_POST['member']) && is_array($_POST['member'])) {
$count = count($_POST['member']);
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++) {
$fname = $_POST['member'][$i]['fname'];
$lname = $_POST['member'][$i]['lname'];
}
}