Use MySQLi Prepared Statement to Enter Dynamic, Multiple Rows into Database? - php

Question

I have created a HTML form where users would submit their name, email, and language skills. Since a user may speak more than one language, user will be able to generate additional rows by clicking an "add" button.
The form will then be submitted and entered into a MySQL database. I'm using two tables to hold the received data, whereas the user-id in the first table will be auto_incremented:
| (user-id) | name | email|
| user-id | language | proficiency|
Now I'm trying to write the PHP code, which looks something like this:
$name = $_POST['name'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
$add_table1 = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO table1 (name, email) VALUES (?, ?)");
$add_table2 = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO table2 (user_id, language, proficiency) VALUES (?, ?, ?)");
$add_table1->bind_param("ss", $name, $email);
$add_table1->execute();
$user-id = $mysqli->insert_id;
foreach($_POST['language'] as $index => $language) {
$index = intval($index);
$language = mysql_real_escape_string($language);
$proficiency = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['proficiency'][$index]);
$add_table2->bind_param("iss", $user-id, $language, $proficiency);
$add_table2->execute();
}
$add_table1->close();
$add_table2->close();
$mysqli->close();
The table should look like this
| 1 | Mark | mark#me.com |
| 2 | Sue | sue#me.net |
|1 | English | perfect |
|1 | Spanish | awesome |
|2 | English | great |
|2 | French | ok |
|2 | Korean | fluent |
However, with my code table 1 looks fine, but table 2 looks like this
| 1 | | |
| 2 | | |
Can somebody help? Thanks!

Answer 1

One thing I should point out is that you don't use mysql_real_escape_string with prepared statements.
Another thing is that $user-id is not a valid variable name. You can't use a hyphen.
Edit:
It's a good thing to turn on error reporting and to output mysqli/mysqli_stmt::$error when anything fails. Most problems can be resolved with these.

Answer 2

Your php mysqli code looks pretty good. Are you sure you are retreiving correctly the POST values? int the foreach loop print $language and $proficiency before executing the queries