Random number of FORM fields being prepared for database - php

Question

I've found myself with the following problem: I have form with a random number of fields. (This is so users can enter their fellow team members's names -- and there's no set size for teams.) I need this inputted data to be formatted in preparation for being stored in a database.
The database structure is fine, it's just getting a random number of $_POSTs and putting them into an array that's the issue.
So far I've got some javascript that allows the user to create/remove an infinite number of fields, with incrementing ids/names (e.g. TeamMemberName1, TeamMemberEmail1, TeamMemberName2, TeamMemberEmail2, etc.).
Right now I've created an ugly series of PHP statements that puts a reasonable amount of POSTed data into a multidimenional array -- I don't see why a team should ever be bigger than 50 -- and then I was going to process the array to remove any blank rows before passing it onto the database.
Example:
$submittedTeamMembers =
array ( "teamMember1" =>
array ( "name" => $_POST["teamMemberName1"],
"email" => $_POST["teamMemberEmail1"])
);
But I'm guessing there's a better way!

Answer 1

Your input names can be in array form, which PHP will understand perfectly. Example:
<input type="text" name="teamMembers[0]['name']" />
<input type="text" name="teamMembers[0]['email']" />
which PHP will interpret after post as you'd expect:
//print_r($_POST['teamMembers']);
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[name] => foo
[email] => bar
)
)

Answer 2

Just give all your fields a name of 'TeamMemberName[]' or 'TeamMemberEmail[]'. Each should be posted regardless of whether or not the value is there, so they should always match up.
This will pass them as an array to your server-side PHP script, so you can access them like so:
$teamMemberNames = $_POST["teamMemberName"];
$teamMemberEmails = $_POST["teamMemberEmail"];
for ($i = 0; $i < count($teamMemberNames); $i++)
echo "name = {$teamMemberNames[$i]}, email = {$teamMemberEmails[$i]}\n";