Loop through $_POST - php

Question

I have a for loop which actually displays a product name and several buttons like: Edit, Update , Cancel
For each product i am displaying , it will have its own set of Edir, Update, and Cancel button as below.
Paint Edit Update Cancel
I want to loop through the buttons so that for each category, I can perform a different action. I was thinking about using something like btn_edit1, btn_edit2 for the name of the button and use a for loop. 1, 2 are the category ids.
Maybe Im not clear enough. Sorry for that. Can anyone give me some suggestions?
for($i = 0; $i<count($obj_categories_admin->categories);$i++)
{
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td width='1500'>";
echo "<input type='text' name='name' size = '30' value='" . $obj_categories_admin->categories[$i]['name'] . "'/>";
echo "</td>";
echo "<td width='500'>";
echo "<input type='submit' value = 'Update details' name='submit_update_category_" .
$obj_categories_admin->categories[$i]['category_id'] . "'/>";
echo "</td>";
echo "<td width='500'>";
echo "<input type='submit' value = 'Edit Sub Categories' name='submit_edit_sub_" .
$obj_categories_admin->categories[$i]['category_id'] . "'/>";
echo "</td>";
echo "<td width='500'>";
echo "<input type='submit' value = 'Delete' name='submit_delete_category_" .
$obj_categories_admin->categories[$i]['category_id'] . "'/>";
echo "</td>";
echo "<td width='500'>";
echo "<input type='submit' value = 'Cancel' name='cancel'" . "'/>" ;
echo "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
I want to do something like
foreach($_POST as $key => $value)
{
}
so that when i click on a button it performs an action depending on the category_id.
I have tried this as suggested:
echo "<input type='submit' name='submit[add_category]'" .
"[" . $obj_categories_admin->categories[$i]['category_id'] . "]". " value='Add' />";
Now in my class, i have:
$a1 = $_POST['submit'];
$which_action = reset(array_keys($a1));
$which_category = reset(array_keys($a1[$which_action]));
But, i am getting the error : undefined index submit

Answer 1

I would give the name attributes of my submit buttons using following pattern:
name="submit[which_action][which_category]"
For example for your 'Update' button for category 123:
name="submit[update][123]"
When the user clicks any of the submit buttons, to determine which specific button the user has clicked you just need check for $_POST['submit'] in your PHP code:
$a1 = $_POST['submit'];
$which_action = reset(array_keys($a1));
$which_category = reset(array_keys($a1[$which_action]));

Answer 2

Well i would use something like this:
<fieldset>
<!-- product info -->
<input name="productName[paint]" />
<input name="productName[edit]" />
<input name="productName[delete]" />
<input name="productName[cancel]" />
</fieldset>
that way when you get it to the serverside everything will be nice and tidy in nested arrays.