Access an html table data in PHP - php

Question

If I have a table like this in an html form,
<form method="POST" action="a.php">
<table name="dataTable">
<tr>
<td>row one col one</td>
<td>row one col two</td>
<td>row one col three</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row two col one</td>
<td>row two col one</td>
<td>row two col one</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
how can I access the table data when the form is submitted to p.php?
$dataList = $_POST['dataTable']; ???????

Answer 1

A straightforward work-around would be to add hidden fields to all your cells:
<form method="POST" action="a.php">
<table name="dataTable">
<tr>
<td>row one col one<input type="hidden" name="row_one_cell_one" value="row one col one" /></td>
<td>row one col two<input type="hidden" name="row_one_cell_two" value="row one col two" /></td>
etc...
It leaves your view unchanged, but you can acces the cells in your php script with this simple code:
$cellData = $_POST['row_one_cell_one'];

Answer 2

without any workarounds and conversions, you can't.
What you can do is converting your table in a serialized array with JavaScript before submitting and setting the result in a hidden input. Then you can read the value in PHP and de-serialize the array, getting all the values. If you do it right, you can even iterate over the rows and columns.

Answer 3

You can make use on JavaScript to render the table DOM,
and set it to a hidden field right before you do the submission,
so, PHP able to interpret is part of the $_POST
<form method="post" onSubmit="set_value()">
<table name="dataTable">
...
</table>
<input type="hidden" value="" id="hidden_table" name="hidden_table" />
</form>
<script>
function set_value()
{
var obj = document.getElementById("hidden_table");
var tbl = document.getElementsByName("dataTable")[1]
obj.value = tbl.innerHTML;
}
</script>
However, when using JavaScript DOM, it will return full specification of TABLE elements
include THEAD, TBODY ... etc

Answer 4

First link using the topic as keywords in google shows up this: http://wonshik.com/snippet/Convert-HTML-Table-into-a-PHP-Array
I'm sure you can adapt it to your problem.