I need help making a PHP form parse code lighter - php

Question

I have a PHP form which allows users to enter up 99 items if they do so desire. I was hoping that PHP doesn't need me to parse each individule item and it can handle doing a loop or something for when there are many items enter.
currently my php looks like this
$item1 = $_POST['Item1'] ;
$item2 = $_POST['Item2'] ;
$item3 = $_POST['Item3'] ;
$item4 = $_POST['Item4'] ;
$item5 = $_POST['Item5'] ;
// etc, etc
But I don't want 99 lines of code if only 5% of people enter more than one item in the form.

Answer 1

Have all the inputs named items[] (note the []). You can then access them all in an array called $_POST['items']. You can then iterate through all the values:
foreach($_POST['items'] as $item)
{
// ...
}

Answer 2

change the input-names like this:
<input type="text" name="items[]"/>
<input type="text" name="items[]"/>
<input type="text" name="items[]"/>
and you'll get an array:
$items = $_POST['items'] ;
foreach($items as $item){
// walk throug items and do something
}

Answer 3

You need to name your input elements like this:
<input type="text" name="Item[]" value="A" />
<input type="text" name="Item[]" value="B" />
<input type="text" name="Item[]" value="C" />
And then in PHP you will see this in $_POST as an
array(
0 => 'A',
1 => 'B',
2 => 'C'
)
This is a standard PHP trick, and you can use it to get any elements automatically inside the same array when reading them from $_POST and $_GET.

Answer 4

Another alternative :
foreach($_POST as $index => $value) {
$item[$index] = $value;
}

Answer 5

for ($i = 1;$i<100;$i++)
{
${"item".$i} = $_POST['Item'.$i];
}
//or you can use variables directly
//echo ($_POST['Item1']);
or you can change Item1, Item2, .... in form to Items[] and then call it like
$items = $_POST['Items'];
print_r($items);
/*
array
(
[0] => "some"
[1] => "text"
[2] => "another"
[3] => "text"
)
*/

Answer 6

foreach ($_POST as $key=>$value) {
if (substr($key, 0, 4)=="Item") {
$item[substr($key, 4)]=$value;
}
}