coding/algorithm/best practise/design help required!

[jasonlive]

i have a php page that is opened by a form. when opened it displays 100's of rows of data from a database.

what i need to do is have the user click on some rows, using either a link or a checkbox or something

and then submit to the database that "that row" is now "checked" or "flagged" or something. i added a column to the database "flag" with value 0 or 1.

also it is preferable to remain on same page after the database update. 

 

what would be the best way to do this?

 

-i have tried putting a checkbox in each row, but then i dont know how to build the query at the end to submit multiple rows (how to access each row's name/value)

 

-i then considered making each row a form itself...but seems bulky. (as i write this and wait for advice, im going to try this method it actually seems the easiest)

 

-i considered making each row a link....but then how do i submit a query from a link(using javascript?!)

[mac_gyver]

you would have one form that encompasses all the checkboxes. the name= ' ... ' attribute  of the checkbox form field would be an array, with a name that holds meaning for that field and the array index would be the id of the row from your database table - name='field[234]'

 

when the form is submitted, all the checked checkboxes will exist in the $_POST['field'] array, with the keys being the list of id's.

 

to set the database field value to a 1 for the checked checkboxes, you would use something like -

$ids = implode(',',array_keys($_POST['field']));
$query = "UPDATE your_table SET field = 1 WHERE id IN($ids)";

to set the database field value to a 0 for the unchecked checkboxes, you would use something like -

$ids = implode(',',array_keys($_POST['field']));
$query = "UPDATE your_table SET field = 0 WHERE id NOT IN($ids)";

[.josh]

To stay on the same page, you could either have the form action point to the same page or else you can have a separate script handle the form post/processing and then make an ajax call instead of submitting the form.

[jasonlive]

thankyou! its alive . nothing beats that feeling of when code starts working!