Adding Table Cell Contents to PHP $_POST - php

Question

From my understanding, the only way to retrieve $_POST data is using the name attribute of the element, like so:
<INPUT type="text" name="txt">
and the PHP portion:
<?php $text = $_POST["txt"]; ?>
I've got a table with cells containing plain text, for example:
<td class="textField" id="txt1"> Some text </td>
Is there anyway to post the text in these table cells and retrieve them using either the class or id? Maybe there is a clever way to get around this? <td> doesn't have a name attribute thus the reason for my question.
Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use ajax, getting values from the table with javascript. JQuery is a good library for this:
http://api.jquery.com/category/ajax/

Answer 2

$_POST and $_GET come from the request. Meaning the browser sends them with the headers and PHP provides an interface to them with $_POST, $_GET, $_COOKIE, and $_REQUEST. The browser doesn't send contents of a table in the request.
If you're trying to make a field 'read-only' you're going about it the wrong way. If a field is read-only you should never trust the browser to re-send that same value.

Answer 3

To retrieve values from many form-fields who all have the same name (because you generate them with a loop in PHP), append brackets to the names of your fields.
Simple example:
<form method="post">
<input type=text name="myfield[]">
<input type=text name="myfield[]">
<input type=text name="myfield[]">
<input type=text name="myfield[]">
</form>
If you add to your code:
<?php print_r($_POST); ?>
you'll notice that the $_POST variable is populated with an array named "myfield" having 4 values from $_POST['myfield'][0] to $_POST['myfield'][3]. You may then use a foreach loop in PHP to retrieve all values.

Answer 4

The solution that ended up working for me was to grab the data using jQuery, encode it in JSON, and add it to a serial array of the rest of the form data.
$("#orderForm").submit(function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
// Get NON-INPUT table cell data
var subtotal = new Array();
$('#priceTable td.subtotal').each(function() {
subtotal.push($(this).html());
});
// Get all INPUT form data and organize as array
var formData = $(this).serializeArray();
// Encode with JSON
var subArray = JSON.stringify(subtotal);
// Add to formData array
formData.push({name: 'sub', value: subArray});
// Submit with AJAX
$.ajax({
url: "submitOrder.php",
data: formData,
type: 'post',
success: function(data) {
alert(data);
}
});
});
And on the PHP side:
$subtotals = json_decode($_POST['sub']);