Get POST variable using wildcard or regex - php

Question

How to get POST variable using regex like this:
$var = $_POST['foo?'];
or
$var = $_POST['foo\w{1}'];
Edit:
My form has many buttons with separate names: file1, file2, file3. When pressing a button, of course it pass file1 or file2, ... I want to get the value using that name.

Answer 1

The easiest thing I can think of is this:
$allPostKeys = implode(',',array_keys($_POST));
$wildcardVals = array();
if (preg_match_all('/,?(foo[0-9]),?/',$allPostKeys,$matches))
{
$wildCardKeys = $matches[1];
while($key = array_shift($wildCardKeys))
{
$wildcardVals[$key] = $_POST[$key];
}
}
if (!empty($wildcardVals))
{//do stuff with all $_POST vals that you needed
}
Replace [0-9] in the regex with . to match any char, or whatever you need to see matched.
Tested this out with an array that had the following keys bar,zar,foo1,foo2,foo3, and it returned array('foo1' => 'val1','foo2' => 'val2','foo3' => 'val3'), which is what you need, I think.
In response to your edit
The $_POST super-global can be a multi dimensional array, too:
<input type="file" name="file[]" id="file1"/>
<input type="file" name="file[]" id="file2"/>
<input type="file" name="file[]" id="file3"/>
That way, you can easily loop through the files:
foreach($_POST['file'] as $file)
{
//process each file individually: $file is the value
}

Answer 2

run in a loop through the array, and check on the keys
like:
// some POST: array('a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'cc11' => 6666666)
foreach( $_POST as $k => $v ) {
if ( preg_match('#^[^\d]+$#', $k) ) { // not number key
// you actions ...
}
}

Answer 3

You'd have to loop through the $_POST array:
$regex = "#foo\w{1}#";
$vars = array();
foreach($_POST as $name=>$value) {
if(preg_match($regex, $name)) {
$vars[$name] = $value;
}
}
Hope this helps.

Answer 4

In your case, you could do this:
<?php
$_POST = array(
"foo" => "bar",
"file1" => "something",
"file2" => "somethingelse",
"file3" => "anothervalue",
"whocares" => "aboutthis"
);
$files = array();
foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
if (preg_match("/file(\d+)/", $key, $match)) {
$files[$match[1]] = $value;
}
}
print_r($files);
?>
Output (where the key matches file[NUMBER]):
Array (
[1] => something
[2] => somethingelse
[3] => anothervalue
)

Answer 5

Name your form fields as array data structures:
<input name="files[]" ...>
foreach ($_POST['files'] as $file) {
...
}