List/Menu (multiple selected) insert into MySQL

Question

I have been building a feedback form and I am running into a
issue that when I place a list/menu that allows multiple selections
when I submit my form in my MySQL database it collected the
information but only on the last multiple selection.
For example, this is what my list/menu looks like.
<select name="occasion" size="5" multiple="MULTIPLE"
id="occasion">
<option value="Spur of the moment,">Spur of the
moment</option>
<option value="Family dinner">Family
dinner</option>
<option value="Special occasion (i.e.
birthday)">Special occasion (i.e. birthday)</option>
<option value="Office get together">Office get
together</option>
<option value="Romantic dinner">Romantic
dinner</option>
<option value="Night out with friends">Night out with
friends</option>
<option value="Business meeting">Business
meeting</option>
<option value="Other">Other</option>
</select>
And my MySQL database I have it set up as...
Field Type
occasion mediumtext
I do not know why I cannot have more than one selection
inputed into my field, what must I do to correct this? Everything
works perfectly expect the multi selected list/menu. I want to
place all that is selected in the list/menu in that one database
field called occasion.

Answer 1

.oO(MikeL7)
>>You should also test with isset() and is_array() if
$_POST['occasion']
>>is available at all and of the expected type. The
code above will also
>>throw a notice if $insert_string is not initialized
before the loop.
>
> I use both isset and is_array in my code, When you say
notice, you dont mean
>a script stoppiong error?
Nope. An E_NOTICE error won't terminate the script, but
shouldn't happen
nevertheless. While developing, the error_reporting directive
should be
set to E_ALL|E_STRICT and _all_ reported problems should be
solved. It's
not only better coding style, but also helps to prevent real
errors. In
this particular case it was just a guess, because it was only
a part of
the code. But using an uninitialized variable with a '.='
operator for
example would lead to a notice, which should be fixed.
>>But of course this is a really bad DB design, as it
already violates the
>> first normal form (1NF). Just some ideas for queries
that might come to
>> mind, but would be really hard to do with such a
comma-separated list:
>
> A better table design would be to have column for |
list_ID | user_ID |
>song_ID | and do a insert for each song selected.
Yes, something like that.
>Thanks for the input, i like escaping the variables from
a string as they
>stand out more in code view, is the single quote method
faster? And which one
>will be or is already deprecated?
All are correct and won't be deprecated. IMHO it's more or
less just
personal preference. It also depends on the used editor and
its syntax
highlighting capabilities. For example I use Eclipse/PDT for
all my PHP
scripts, which can also highlight variables inside a string.
But if the
above is your preferred way, there's nothing really wrong
with it.
Just some additional thoughts:
Personally I prefer as less escaping and concatenating as
possible,
because such a mixture of single quotes, double quotes, dots
and
sometimes even escaped quote signs (for example when printing
HTML)
_really_ confuses me. I like to keep my code clean and
readable.
Something like this:
print "<img src=\"".$someVar."\" ...>\n";
not only hurts my eye, it is also quite error-prone. It's
easy to miss a
quote or a backslash and get a parse error back, especially
in editors
with limited syntax highlighting (or none at all). So I would
prefer
print "<img src='$someVar' ...>\n";
or even
printf("<img src='%s' ...>\n", $someVar);
When it comes to performance issues, of course there's a
difference
between the various methods. But for me they don't really
matter. In
practice you usually won't notice any difference between an
echo, a
print or a printf() call for example, as long as you don't
call them
a million times in a loop.
So I always just use the method that leads to the most
readable code.
In many cases, especially when a lot of variables or
expressions are
involved, (s)printf() wins. Not for performance, but for
readability.
But as said - personal preference. YMMV.
Micha