determine variable names for dynamic variables *RESOLVED*

[markbett]

heres the situation... a form is posted by a user saying i am bringing X number of guests with me to an event.... they are brought to a new page that have x number of boxes so tehy can enter in the name and email address of the people they are bringing......

how do i know how to get these variables back because i dont know what they are on the form because i dont know what X is....

the form i can just have it echo field_id=guest<?echo guest_num?> but once that is posted how do i know how many of those variables i am going to be looking for?  can i make the variables in my php code dynamic as in if($guest<?echo guest_num?>

[Wintergreen]

How are they specifying the amount?  If they're doing it by a small text-area, just give it a name and then it's easy to do.  You can just access the number of people coming with them with $_POST['guests'] or whatever you choose to name the element.

Then just do
[code]

if(!empty($_POST['guests'])) {
$guests = $_POST['guests'];
$_SESSION['guests'] = $guests;
for($i = 0; $i < $guests; $i++) {
  echo "Guest " . $i . "<br />";
  echo "<input type=text size=25 name=" . $i . "><br />";
}
}
[/code]
The session var is just so you know how many names you'll be checking on the next page. 

[markbett]

http://207.5.19.133/sbqa/event_viewer.php?req=view_event&event_id=41

click the I want to go and then on the next page make the dropdown selector anything other then 0 and you will see whats going on....  right now those form values all have the same name... thats what i need to change but i need to do it in a manner so when i post that second form i know what variables im reading and what they are called....

[markbett]

any ideas?

[michaellunsford]

[code=php:0]while(is_set($_GET['guestnum'.$i)) {
  do something with $_GET['guestnum'.$i];
  $i++;
}
[/code]

should work

you can also "eval" code to do what you were talking about:
[code=php:0]eval("if($guest".$guest_num");");[/code]
but eval can get pretty confusing

[markbett]

arent your quotes in the wrong places??

shoulndt it read

$_POST['$guestnum.$i'] witht the quotes outside both vars?

[michaellunsford]

in standard strings, it should work either way. as an array pointer, not so sure. To be safe, I always attach variables outside -- but that's just me.

[markbett]

this isnt right because its not making me a new variable... its putting data in a variable...

i need to be able to know that $guest1_name exists and guest1_email exists and i need to be able to process all these variables until all the guests are through.... but if there were 100 guests then that means i would have to write the code out for 100 propeple and then counter to stop on time but thats a lot of bloat....  so im not trying to load data into a variable... im trying to make the variables on the fly.....

[markbett]

[code] case "proc_guests":
$i='1';
$guests=3;
$guestnum1="test";
$guestnum2="tesingt";
$guestnum3="tessafasfd sdft";
//$guests=mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['guests']);
while($i<=$guests){
echo "$guestnum.$i";
$i++;
}
break;[/code]

which is a variation of your example outputted=
.1.2.3

without the " is outputs 123

[markbett]

does anyoen have any alternative ideas for how i could work this code??  im just getting stuck on how i know what the name of the form fields im fetchign data from will be....  if there is a better way then let me know......

[markbett]

ok i got it... woohoo

[code] $i='1';
$guests=3;
$guestnum1="test";
$guestnum2="tesingt";
$guestnum3="tessafasfd sdft";
//$guests=mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['guests']);
while($i<=$guests){
echo ${guestnum.$i};
$i++;
}[/code]

returns what i need