Pass hidden value through a form

Question

Hi.  I'm trying to create a registration form in which users select an organization from a drop down list that is populated from a db table.  All I want the user to see is the origanization's name, but there is also an ID number for each organization in the table.  Is there a way I can submit the ID number for the origanization the user chooses as a hidden field?  I feel like it should be fairly simple, but I can't wrap my brain around it.
Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

What you've done here is ideal, you just need to make sure you pull back the person's organisation info at the same time as you get their base info to avoid you doing multiple database calls - from the sounds of it this is what you've done. If not, and for the purposes of anyone else who has similar requirements, you do something like this:
Table 1 - Organisations
  org_id     NUMBER
  org_name   VARCHAR
Table 2 - Users
  user_id       NUMBER
  user_org_id   NUMBER
                FOREIGN KEY onto ORGANISATIONS (org_id)
  user_name     VARCHAR
  user_password VARCHAR(32)
  etc etc
Then you get back all the info, a simple join will do:
SELECT      *
FROM        users,
            organisations
WHERE       user_org_id = org_id
AND         user_id = whatever
That way you're doing all the work at the database level - there is simply no faster way of doing this as databases will walk all over Coldfusion when it comes to speed and efficiency.
Good work, glad you've got it sorted!
O.