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kgscott284

Essentially, what i am trying to do is upgrade an old app i created to use some of the great AJAX features of jquery. Example: instead of limiting the admin to creating categories one at a time which can obviously be really monotonous, I would like to convert the page so that you can dynamically add a field so you can add multiple categories at once if desired...my issue now is, how do i go about properly posting the data via php? Here is what i am working with:

http://jsfiddle.net/pseud0cool/WVzH4/

Keep in mind i am planning on using AJAX to post the data...Let me know if you have any ideas for improving or anything that can help at all.

Thanks Guys!

xpy

First of all,

var cats = $("#categoryTable tr").length;

won't work because if you remove one (not the last) and then add one, you will have duplicate Id's and names... Maybe you should just do a cats++ every time you add a cat.
Secondly, Itterate through your inputs and bulid your POST data like:


var postData = '?';

$("#categoryTable input[type='text']").each(
    function(i,e){
    
        postData+= (postData!='?'?'&':'')+$(e).attr('id')+'='+$(e).val();
        
    });

( I think)
I'm sure there are better ways though...

kgscott284

damn, i tried and tried changing it as you suggested, but still can't figure it out...

knittingfrenzy18

Yah, this is something I've been puzzling over.

I haven't got to this point in my project yet, but I'll have to do it sometime...

I need a solution on this as well.

kgscott284

I just don't understand how i can get the form to generate them properly, this blows! I may have to take the to stack if no one is able to help me here :(

traq

instead of dynamically generating a new name for each category (category_2, category_3, category_4, etc..), why not just make "category" an array?
-- never worry about duplicate names.
-- _much_ easier to manage server-side.
-- if you don't need the ids (it doesn't seem like you do), just omit them, and you won't need to do cats++ or anything, you could just clone and append and be done with it.

as a side note, .live() is depreciated. .on() is currently the preferred method to attach event handlers (or, use .delegate() with older versions of jQuery).

kgscott284

Thanks for the thought, I will have to find something that teaches that...I pieced together some code to pull this together...I do know that .live() is deprecated, I am trying to go one step at a time so i can at least get it functioning while i am learning. Thanks for your input!

traq

teaches what?

I simply meant <input name="category[]">. Most of the adjustments you'd need to make would be removing code, not figuring out new code.

kgscott284

OH i see...duh, ok cool thanks alot...

xpy

I'd aggre with @traq for the array thing... You'll have to worry for one thing less...
anyway, in the code I suggested, you are supposed to use the variable postData to your AJAX request like this


$.ajax({
  type: "POST",
  url: "phpPage.php",
  data: postData
})

then, at the phpPage.php you'll handle your POST data...

knittingfrenzy18

So I understand that this would generate every field as a element in an array that I can parse with the POST data?

I didn't know you could do that. Cool. Thanks a bunch.

traq

obviously, this won't work on jsfiddle, but give it a try locally:

http://jsfiddle.net/XHe4x/6/

kgscott284

Wow thanks! lol, though i usually like to learn by doing that at least puts me where i need to be, I am trying to learn some more advanced jQuery and this is a great start.

Thanks again, far more than i expected!

traq

no problem - and if you like to "learn by doing," great! "Do" compare and see what I did differently. If you want to "do" more, then try creating the new <input>s via javascript, instead of creating-and-hiding-and-cloning a "real" one in your HTML markup (if you notice, you'll always have an extra, empty $_POST variable with the current approach).

and if you don't already, visit api.jquery.com - a lot of what I did is straight from the examples there.

kgscott284

That is where i am learning from for the more advanced stuff...essentially i learned PHP from the documentation online...Cheers again!

treehouse : what would you like to learn today?

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Need Some Advanced jQuery/PHP help...Please?