POST an array from an HTML form without javascript [duplicate]

Question

I have a form that is a little complex and I am hoping to simplify the server-side (PHP) processing by natively POSTing an array of tuples.

The first part of the form represents a User:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Address
• etc

The second part of the form represents a Tree:

• Fruit
• Height
• etc

The problem is that I need to be able to POST multiple Trees for a single User in the same form. I would like to send the information as a single User with an array of Trees but this might be too complex to do with a form. The only thing that comes to mind is using javascript to create some JSON message with a User object and an array of Tree objects. But it would be nice to avoid javascript to support more users (some people have scripts turned off).

Answer 1

check this one out.

<input type="text" name="firstname"> <input type="text" name="lastname"> <input type="text" name="email"> <input type="text" name="address">  <input type="text" name="tree[tree1][fruit]"> <input type="text" name="tree[tree1][height]">  <input type="text" name="tree[tree2][fruit]"> <input type="text" name="tree[tree2][height]">  <input type="text" name="tree[tree3][fruit]"> <input type="text" name="tree[tree3][height]"> 

it should end up like this in the $_POST[] array (PHP format for easy visualization)

$_POST[] = array(     'firstname'=>'value',     'lastname'=>'value',     'email'=>'value',     'address'=>'value',     'tree' => array(         'tree1'=>array(             'fruit'=>'value',             'height'=>'value'         ),         'tree2'=>array(             'fruit'=>'value',             'height'=>'value'         ),         'tree3'=>array(             'fruit'=>'value',             'height'=>'value'         )     ) ) 

Answer 2

You can also post multiple inputs with the same name and have them save into an array by adding empty square brackets to the input name like this:

<input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment1"/> <input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment2"/> <input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment3"/> <input type="text" name="comment[]" value="comment4"/> 

If you use php:

print_r($_POST['comment'])  

you will get this:

Array ( [0] => 'comment1' [1] => 'comment2' [2] => 'comment3' [3] => 'comment4' )