Submit entire SELECT list, not only selected items 1

cmayo · Feb 17, 2006

Seems like I used to know how to do this, but I'm getting old and my brain only works when it wants to these days.

I'm allowing the user to create a SELECT list by adding items to it and reordering them, and need to be able to submit the entire list, in order, instead of only sending the list items the user might have selected.

Seems like I used to use Javascript to iterate through the list and add each item to a hidden field, then submit the hidden field along with the form, but that seems pretty clunky in retrospect.

I'm using PHP for server-parsed code, might there be a clean way to do this with PHP, like maybe name the SELECT like a PHP array (<select name="listname[]">) and let PHP deal with the list as an array?

Any suggestions would be apprciated.

kaht · Feb 17, 2006

Seems like I used to know how to do this, but I'm getting old and my brain only works when it wants to these days.

You used to do a lot of web work using frames, eh?

[small]Ignore me, that's an inside joke[/small]

-kaht

[small] <.[/small]
[banghead]

[small](He's back)[/small]

cmayo · Feb 17, 2006

Well... not a lot, no. Frames sucked, even back then.

theniteowl · Feb 17, 2006

You can grab the select box object and loop through it to get all the values and store them into a hidden form field or you could grab the innerHTML of the select box and pass that. Then parse out the values however you like in PHP.

Here is an example of pulling the fields separated by commas and storing them in a form field.

In another script I wrote I pulled the entire form innerHTML, modified all fields to lock them so they cannot be edited and passed the entire HTML string in a form field so that my processing page could send that out as the submitted email version of the form. That way I do not have to re-create the form for email purposes.

Code:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function checksel() {
  var sel = document.getElementById('myselect').options;
  var selvals='';
  for (var x=0;x<sel.length;x++) {
    if (selvals != '')
      selvals+=',';
    selvals+=sel[x].value;
  }   
  document.getElementById('mysel').value = selvals;
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="checksel();">
<form>
<select id="myselect" size="1">
<option value="Uno">Uno</option>
<option value="Dos">Dos</option>
<option value="Tres">Tres</option>
<option value="Quatro">Quatro</option>
</select>
<br><br>
<input type="text" id="mysel">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Stamp out, eliminate and abolish redundancy!

cmayo · Feb 17, 2006

Niteowl, thanks much. That'll work nicely and is the approach I'll be taking with this project.

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Submit entire SELECT list, not only selected items 1

cmayo

MIS

kaht

Programmer

cmayo

MIS

theniteowl

Programmer

cmayo

MIS

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