PHP Programming > The Occasional Tutorial

Updating multiple records from one form

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Ojoshiro:
Hello me, it's me again,

I have hung around on this board for a while now and I have seen some problems pop up over and over again. I'd like to try and tackle one here: the problem of updating many records (in a database in this example) from one HTML form.

Imagine we have this table in the database:

--- Code: ---Table: User
Id
Username
Password
First_name
Last_name
Birthdate
Email
Subscr_date

--- End code ---
 
Imagine you're writing something for the administrator so that they can reset all passwords from one form.
( you need a reason, right? )
For every User-record in the database we want a line with the username, first_name/last_name, subscription date and a 'Reset password' checkbox.

--- PHP Code: ---
$dbh = mysql_connect( $host, $user, $pass ); // Connect to a database
if ( mysql_error() )
{   echo "Cannot connect to database on [$host] as [$user] : ".mysql_error(); 
    exit;
}
mysql_select_db( $database ); // Select the correct database

$query = "select id, username, first_name, last_name, subscr_date from user";

$result = mysql_query( $query );
if ( mysql_error() )
{   echo "Cannot run query [$query] : ".mysql_error(); 
    exit;
}
// Create the form
echo '<form name="send_new_pass" action="sendnewpass.php" method="post">';
echo '<table>';
echo '<tr><td>Reset</td><td>Username</td><td>Name</td><td>Join date</td></tr>';
while ( $row = mysql_fetch_assoc( $result ) )
{   echo '<tr>';
    echo '<td><input type="hidden" name="id[]" value="'.$row['id'].'"/>'.
         '<input type="check" name=".$row['id']. '_reset" value="on"/></td>';
    echo '<td>'. $row['username']. '</td>';
    echo '<td>'. $row['first_name']. ' '. $row['last_name']. '</td>';
    echo '<td>'. $row['subscr_date']. '</td>';
    echo '</tr>';
}
echo '</table>';
echo '<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Engage"/>';
echo '</form>';

--- End code ---

As you can see the 'id's are passed as an array.

That done you need to write the PHP script that is going to process this form. We named it 'sendnewpass.php'.

--- PHP Code: ---
$id_array = $_POST['id'];     // First get all the id's
foreach( $id_array as $id )   // Loop through them
{   if ( array_key_exists( $id.'_reset', $_POST ) && $_POST[$id.'_reset'] == 'on' )
    {   resetPasswordAndSendMail( $id );   // This is a function that resets the password and sends an email
    }                                      // to the user.
}
...

function resetPasswordAndSendMail( $id )
{   $password = "CatchATurian";
    $query = "update User set password='$password' where id='$id'";
    $result = mysql_query( $query );
    if ( mysql_error() )
    {   echo "Cannot run query [$query] : ".mysql_error(); 
        exit;
    }
    // and here some code that digs up the emailadres and sends a notification with the new password.
    // ( I leave that to you )
}

--- End code ---

In this example I only access the checkbox via the id, but I hope you see how you can keep lots of form-fields together this way.
I hope this is going to help someone. If you need more explanation, contact me.

Good luck! ;D
O.

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