Loop

[user4fun]

I have a form5 textfieldsusername //submitted only once it is the samethen 4 textfieldstxt1txt2txt3txt4after the user submits the infromationit insert the information in a tableproblemsright now

$link = mysql_connect("", "", "") or die ("No connection");   mysql_select_db(" ") or die ("no database");	  $sql = "INSERT INTO submit_entry (entry_id, username, txt, condition)  VALUES (' ', '$username', '$txt1', 'contacted')";  $query=mysql_query($sql);if($query){	echo " ";}else{	echo "<b>ERROR</b>";}$sql = "INSERT INTO submit_entry (entry_id, username, txt, condition)  VALUES (' ', '$username', '$txt2', 'contacted')";  $query=mysql_query($sql);if($query){	echo " ";}else{	echo "<b>ERROR</b>";}

and so on for 4 timesnotice the '$txt' is the only one that changescan i put that in a loop?or is the code ok as is.problem 2how can i make it recognize that the txt2 is empty and it should stop and not bother process the next fields txt3 and txt4incase the user only inserted txt1

[Mr_CHISOL]

Hi!The easiest way is to rename txt1,txt2 etc to txt[] (all to the same):

<textarea name="txt[]"></textarea>or<input type="text" name="txt[]" />

and then loop thru them (you get $_POST['txt'] as an array):

$txts = $_POST['txt'];foreach( $txts as $txt ) {  $sql = "INSERT INTO submit_entry (entry_id, username, txt, condition)  VALUES (' ', '$username', '$txt', 'contacted')";    $query=mysql_query($sql);  if($query)	  echo " ";  else	  echo "<b>ERROR</b>";}

Note that you should only get those fields that has a value from the browser. If you want to be on the safe side you can add this to the loop:

if (empt($txt))	   break;

It's always a good practice to avoid to the same thing over and over in your code, depending on the case/problem you can use loops (as in your case) or divide the code into functions (or both...)Hope that helped..Good Luck and Don't Panic!

[justsomeguy]

If you want to put your code in a loop, you can do it like this:

$done = false;$nr = 1;while (!$done){  $var = "txt" . $nr++;  if (isset($$var) && !empty($$var))  {	$sql = "INSERT INTO submit_entry (entry_id, username, txt, condition)  VALUES (' ', '$username', '" . mysql_real_escape_string($$var) . "', 'contacted')";	$query=mysql_query($sql);	if(!$query)	{	  echo "<b>ERROR:</b> " . mysql_error();	  $done = true;	}  }  else	$done = true;}

[user4fun]

This is great stuff, i think of many other situation that i have that i can use this loop stuff ofr effectively,Thank you both very much

[user4fun]

Quick questionall my textfields inthe form should be named txtright

[Nakor]

Yes

[justsomeguy]

If you run the first piece of code from Mr Chisol, name all of your variables txt[]. If you run the piece of code I posted, that code looks for local variables named $txt1, $txt2, $txt3 etc. If you are getting them directly out of $_POST or $_GET, you can use something more efficient then what I wrote. What I wrote is expecting local variables called $txt1, $txt2, etc, because that's what you wrote in your first example.

[user4fun]

sorry for the confusioni am getting the variables from a form method postbut when i did change the text fields to txt1, txt2, txt3 it works fine?what more efficient methods do i ned to explore

[henryhenry]

This is something like what I do for the query so that you only have one query and not loop the query itself but the values inside it...

$cols= array(..., ..., ..., ....);$data= array(..., ..., ..., ...); // or you can use the methods described above to get your form data into an array (name="text[]" automatically gives you an array) $query= "INSERT INTO $table (";            foreach ($cols as $v) { $query .= "$v, "; }  //Get each $cols (this is an array of the column names in the same order as your data            $query= substr($query, 0, -2);  //This removes the final ', ' which is added in the loop            $query .= ") VALUES (";             for ($i=$start; $i<=$end; $i++) { $query .= "'".$data[$i]."', "; }  //this puts data from the data array           $query = substr($query, 0, -2);  //remove the last ", " from the loop again           $query .= ")"; //add the last ) to the VALUES ( ) to finish the query    

Then I use this as a function and all you do is set the column names and a few parameters and hey presto :)Don't know if that helps but it works for me!

[justsomeguy]

If you wanted to change the code I posted above to get the data from POST, it would be like this:

$done = false;$nr = 1;while (!$done){  $var = "txt" . $nr++;  if (isset($_POST[$var]) && !empty($_POST[$var]))  {	$sql = "INSERT INTO submit_entry (entry_id, username, txt, condition)  VALUES (' ', '$username', '" . mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[$var]) . "', 'contacted')";	$query=mysql_query($sql);	if(!$query)	{	  echo "<b>ERROR:</b> " . mysql_error();	  $done = true;	}  }  else	$done = true;}

That will work for any number of fields in POST labelled txt1, txt2, txt3 etc. It will stop when it finds one that either doesn't exist or is empty.

[Nakor]

You would have to change the initial value of $nr to 0 because when it is first called it is incremented by 1, correct? As is your code would skip txt1 and instead start with txt2.

[Mr_CHISOL]

No!The increment is done after the value is used (saved in the string in this case), when the operator (++) is after the variable.If the operator is before the variable (++$nr), the increment will be done before the value is used...

[Nakor]

Heh. I always do seem to forget the syntax for the arithmetic functions.

[justsomeguy]

Yeah, those operators are pre-increment and post-increment. If $nr started at 0, then you would use ++$nr instead to do a pre-increment.