PHP Iterate Variable for Array in While Loop

Question

I pulled down an array of business services from my server and wanted to display the data in a form so it could be edited and sent to another page.

I wanted to assign a variable to each piece of data (ie. input type ='text' name='service$c') and iterate the value of $c so that it would assign a new value each time (ex. service1, service2, etc.) so that when the data posted to the next page I could retrieve it by those variable names.

I found that if I put something like " for ($i=1; $i<20 $i++) "inside the while loop, each individual bit of data in my array would print 20 times and if I took it outside of the while loop, the while loop $c would equal "service1" each time.

I did work out a solution, but I'm wondering if it's kind of hackey...It works, but I'm wondering if I could have done it better.

//Create the form
echo "<form action='changeservices2.php' method='post'>";

//Print Out My Array
while ($result_ar = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {

    //Shorten the variable
    $a=$result_ar['service'];

    //Start at 1
    $b=1;

    //Iterate
    $c = $b+$d;
    echo "<input type ='text'  name='service$c' value='$a' ><br>";

    //Since the first variable is null, I needed to help change it
    if (is_null($c)) {$c=1;}
    $d=$c;

}


echo "<input type ='submit'  value='submit' ><br>";
echo "</form>";

It works, I'm just wondering if I'm missing a more elegant / simple solution

Answer 1

Use array-style names:

<input type="text" name="service[]" value="$a">

Then $_POST['service'] will be an array that you can loop over.