Parsing through form with unknown number of fields

Question

I'm working on an invite system where a user can invite one or more people to be coordinators for their account. To allow the user to invite more than one person at a time I'm using mootools to create another row of fields whenever the user clicks a plus. In my example below I'll be using just two rows but they could invite much more if they'd like.

HTML

<table>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name</td>
            <td>Last Name</td>
            <td>Email Address</td>
            <td>Invites</td>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody id="coords">
        <tr id="row-1">
            <td id="1-1"><input type="text" name="fname-1"></td>
            <td id="1-2"><input type="text" name="lname-1"></td>
            <td id="1-3"><input type="text" name="email-1"></td>
            <td id="1-4"><input type="text" name="invites-1"></td>
            <td id="1-5"><span id="minus-1" class="minus">( - )</span></td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="row-2">
            <td id="2-1"><input type="text" name="fname-2"></td>
            <td id="2-2"><input type="text" name="lname-2"></td>
            <td id="2-3"><input type="text" name="email-2"></td>
            <td id="2-4"><input type="text" name="invites-2"></td>
            <td id="2-5"><span id="plus-2" class="plus">( + )</span></td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

$_POST looks like this

Array
(
    [fname-1] => David
    [lname-1] => Last
    [email-1] => email address
    [invites-1] => 15
    [fname-2] => Shirley
    [lname-2] => Last
    [email-2] => other email
    [invites-2] => 10
    [action] => invite
)

PHP parsing is this

if (isset($_POST['action'])) {
    $_SESSION['inviteCoordinators'] = $_POST;
    $newCoordinators = array();


    //loop through all fields
    while(list($key,$value) = each($_SESSION['inviteCoordinators'])) {
        if($key != 'action') {
            list($field, $user) = explode("-",$key);
            $newCoordinators[$user] = array (
                $field => $value
            );
        }
    }
}

I was expecting $newCoordinators to look like this

Array
(
    [1] => Array
           (
               [fname] => David
               [lname] => Last
               [email] => email address
               [invites => 15
           )
    [2] => Array
           (
               [fname] => Shirley
               [lname] => Last
               [email] => other email
               [invites => 10
           )

But all that I'm getting is the [1][invites] => 15 and [2][invites] => 10. I assume i'm only seeing the invites because the others are getting overwritten but I can't make sense of why that would be. What's wrong with my parsing? Or, how should I be doing it?

Side note, the only required field will be the email address.

Answer 1

Why not just name your html form elements using arrays? You could make the form something like:

<table>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name</td>
            <td>Last Name</td>
            <td>Email Address</td>
            <td>Invites</td>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody id="coords">
        <tr id="row-1">
            <td id="1-1"><input type="text" name="invites[1][fname]"></td>
            <td id="1-2"><input type="text" name="invites[1][lname]"></td>
            <td id="1-3"><input type="text" name="invites[1][email]"></td>
            <td id="1-4"><input type="text" name="invites[1][invites]"></td>
            <td id="1-5"><span id="minus-1" class="minus">( - )</span></td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="row-2">
            <td id="1-1"><input type="text" name="invites[2][fname]"></td>
            <td id="1-2"><input type="text" name="invites[2][lname]"></td>
            <td id="1-3"><input type="text" name="invites[2][email]"></td>
            <td id="1-4"><input type="text" name="invites[2][invites]"></td>
            <td id="2-5"><span id="plus-2" class="plus">( + )</span></td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

and you would get your post data already formatted like:

Array
(
    [invites] => Array
        (
            [1] => Array
                (
                    [fname] => first1
                    [lname] => last1
                    [email] => test@test.com
                    [invites] => 2
                )

            [2] => Array
                (
                    [fname] => first2
                    [lname] => last2
                    [email] => test2@test.com
                    [invites] => 5
                )

        )

)

Then you could just do something like:

foreach($_POST['invites'] as $invite){
    //process invite
    echo "{$invite['fname']} {$invite['lname']} was invited. <br />";
}