$input and associative array issue

[celfred]

Hello all,

I'm back on my PW site and I'm facing an issue for a couple of hours now and it's driving me crazy... I'm sure it's not that much for a bunch of you, but it looks hopeless to me so here's my problem :

I'm sending a form to a page and I have many checkboxes sent, so I used an array. My code looks like this :

    <table class="adminTable">
      <tr>
        <td></td>
        <th ng-repeat="task in tasks" title="{{task.summary}}"><div class="vertical-text"><div class="vertical-text__inner">{{task.title}}</div></div></th>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td></td>
        <td ng-repeat="task in tasks" title="Tout cocher"><input type="checkbox" /></td>
      </tr>
      <tr ng-repeat="player in players">
        <th>{{player.title}}</th>
        <td ng-repeat="task in tasks" title="{{player.name}} - {{task.title}}">
          <!-- <input type="hidden" name="player[{{$parent.$index}}]" value="{{player.id}}" /> -->
          <input type="checkbox" name="player[{{player.id}}][]" value="{{task.id}}" />
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>

The important line (to me) is the <input type="checkbox" name="player[{{player.id}}][]" value="{{task.id}}" /> in which I'm trying to pass both the id of the player and the task id to record for the player. All this is embedded into an ng-repeat loop since I'm using AngularJs... Anyway, the variables look ok when I'm looking at the generated source and in fact it look fine if I print_r($GLOBALS) when I recieve the POST variables.

Here's the print_r($GLOBALS) result :

   [_POST] => Array
        (
            [adminTableSubmit] => Enregistrer
            [player] => Array
                (
                    [5157] => Array
                        (
                            [0] => 1580
                            [1] => 1578
                        )

                    [5171] => Array
                        (
                            [0] => 1580
                            [1] => 1578
                        )

                )

        )

(2 players and 2 tasks for each)

BUT : if I write

$checked_players = $input->post->player;

I get an empty array! Indeed, trying to debug my thing (I guess I can call it a 'thing' at this time), I type :

      foreach($input->post as $key => $value)
        echo htmlentities("$key = $value") . "<br />"; 
      $checked_players = $input->post->player;
      print_r($checked_players);

and here's what I get :

adminTableSubmit = Enregistrer
player = Array
Array ( ) 

Whereas I keep thinking my print_r($checked_players) should return :

[5157] => Array
  (
   [0] => 1580
   [1] => 1578
  )

[5171] => Array
  (
   [0] => 1580
   [1] => 1578
  )

so that I could then work with that and save data as pages...

So please, what I am doing wrong? I'm sure I'm messing things up. I've tried so many possibilities and nothing has worked so far. Hence my message to the community. I really don't get it since it seems like such a basic problem... but the facts are there : I'm stuck

Hope to hear from one of you soon. Thanks in advance for your help

PS : Sorry for my long post, but I'm trying to be as clear s possible.

[sforsman]

Hello!

There is a very simple answer for this:

https://github.com/ryancramerdesign/ProcessWire/blob/dev/wire/core/WireInput.php#L60

This is ProcessWire's doing and it is meant to work like that.

For now, I'd just suggest that you fetch them directly from the $_POST-variable ($_POST['players']). Obviously you need to validate/sanitize it yourself, but that's the way to go if you don't want to change your form.

If you want to play by ProcessWire's "rules", then you will modify your checkboxes so that their name is "player_{{player.id}}[]" and parse them into a multi-dimensional array yourself. This could be done with a simple function like this:

/**
 * Parses a multi-dimensional array
 *
 * This function will use $prefix to match the keys in the source $values.
 * For matching keys the suffix is then extracted and used as a key for the resulting array.
 *
 * @param array|Traversable $values The source values
 * @param string $prefix The prefix used for extraction
 * @return array The parsed multi-dimensional array
 */ 
function getMultiDimensional($values, $prefix)
{
  // Validate the arguments
  if(!is_array($values) and !($values instanceof Traversable))
    throw new Exception("Invalid values");
  $len = strlen($prefix);
  if(!$len)
    throw new Exception("Invalid prefix");
 
  $output = Array();

  foreach($values as $key=>$value)
  {
    // The key needs to match our prefix
    if(strcmp(substr($key,0,$len), $prefix) != 0)
      continue;

    // We expect the other part of the key to hold numeric IDs
    $id = intval(substr($key,$len));
    if(!$id)
      continue;

    $output[$id] = $value;
  }
  return $output;
}

// Demonstration
$players = getMultiDimensional(wire('input')->post, "player_");

// print_r($players);
//
//  [5157] => Array
//    (
//      [0] => 1580
//      [1] => 1578
//    )
//  ...and so on

Edit: Added an example and some comments

Needless to say, I suggest the latter solution

Edited October 8, 2014 by sforsman

[celfred]

Wow....

I've just tested what you said and .... THANKS a lot. This works fine and I guess I could have struggled many more days without finding it myself... I've used the second solution . And now I can go on with my little project, cool!

Thanks again for your great explanations and answer.

[sforsman]

That's great news - glad I could help

PS. I did a few edits a few minutes before your reply (comments and stuff)