PHP Reading Request Data Passing arrays by POST
Example
Usually, an HTML form element submitted to PHP results in a single value. For example:
<pre>
<?php print_r($_POST);?>
</pre>
<form method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="foo" value="bar"/>
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>
This results in the following output:
Array
(
[foo] => bar
)
However, there may be cases where you want to pass an array of values. This can be done by adding a PHP-like suffix to the name of the HTML elements:
<pre>
<?php print_r($_POST);?>
</pre>
<form method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="foo[]" value="bar"/>
<input type="hidden" name="foo[]" value="baz"/>
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>
This results in the following output:
Array
(
[foo] => Array
(
[0] => bar
[1] => baz
)
)
You can also specify the array indices, as either numbers or strings:
<pre>
<?php print_r($_POST);?>
</pre>
<form method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="foo[42]" value="bar"/>
<input type="hidden" name="foo[foo]" value="baz"/>
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>
Which returns this output:
Array
(
[foo] => Array
(
[42] => bar
[foo] => baz
)
)
This technique can be used to avoid post-processing loops over the $_POST array, making your code leaner and more concise.
