passing dynamic multidimensional array from jQuery to php and insert into database - php

Question

Hi I am trying to post dynamic arrays from jQuery to PHP to mysql
I get the data from jQuery and able to serialize the data
php takes the variable and it comes up as and array
but when I try to pass the variables for my insert and depending where I put it in the foreach() I either get only the last of the arrays inserted to the database or
multiple inserts of everything (ie: name1, prob1, date1 name1, prob1, date2 ect ect..).
$name, $problem, $timedate post as arrays from jQuery.
in this example I only get the last one of the array
<?php
$name = $_POST['name'];
$problem = $_POST['problem'];
$timedate = $_POST['timedate'];
$con = mysql_connect("localhost","wayko","b4v0e1jj");
if (!$con)
{
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db("joinus", $con);
$seriname = mysql_real_escape_string(serialize($name));
$seriprob = mysql_real_escape_string(serialize($problem));
$seritd = mysql_real_escape_string(serialize($timedate));
foreach($name as $valname){
foreach($problem as $valprob){
foreach($timedate as $valtd){
}
}
}
$sql="INSERT INTO roomchart (Name,TimeDate,Problem)
VALUES
('$valname','$valtd','$valprob')";
echo $sql;
if (!mysql_query($sql,$con))
{
die('Error: ' . mysql_error(). "Actual query: " . $sql);
}
mysql_close($con);
?>
In this example I get multiple inserts of the same data so 3 inserts become 9
foreach($name as $valname){
foreach($problem as $valprob){
foreach($timedate as $valtd){
$sql="INSERT INTO roomchart (Name,TimeDate,Problem)
VALUES
('$valname','$valtd','$valprob')";
echo $sql;
}
}
}
any ideas?

Answer 1

That's how foreach works. In your first example, your three nested foreach loops have nothing in them, so PHP just loops to the last element of each of those three arrays. Then, when you do your SQL statement, you're only doing it once - with the last element of each of those three arrays.
For your second example, you're taking each element of $name, matching it with each element of $problem, and matching each of those combinations with each element in $timedate. So assuming you have 3 elements in each array, you've made 3x3x3 = 27 different combinations of elements from those three arrays (and then SQLing each of those combinations into your database).
I'm assuming that you have 3 arrays of equal size, and you want to pair $name[0] with $problem[0] with $timedate[0], $name[1] with $problem[1] with $timedate[1], etc. Assuming your arrays just have autoincrementing keys (like in the previous sentence), you can use:
foreach ($name as $key => $valname) {
$sql = "INSERT INTO roomchart (Name, TimeDate, Problem)
VALUES ('$valname', '$timedate[$key]', '$problem[$key]')";
echo $sql;
}
This will give you the proper pairing you want.
EDIT EDIT: The last EDIT doesn't work. Use the previous code.