I was hoping I could find someon who could tell me if it is possible to have data from a textarea form be split up so it can be inserted into several fields in a mysql db?

Example of some text would be: 123:456:789 text1 text2 text3 text4

Can php split that up into 5 different fields to be inserted into one row of 5 fields?

Will you be able to control the input so you know there will always be a colon or a space between the text you want to split?

If so php has a function called split() that might be exactly what you're looking for. It will split a string of text into an array of values.

Hi, Thanks for the reply. The data that would be inputted would always be in the same format. In my example 123:456:789 would be one field. The next field would be name etc. All the input is seperated by spaces. I have seen the php split but I am not sure how to use it. Could you please give me an example of how that might work please.

split() will take a text string and split it based on a character you supply and put the results in an array.

so if you have a variable $text that you get from the texarea on your form and it's value is always of the form xxx:xxx:xxx

then you could say:

$data_array = split(":", $text);

You'll end up with an array of values in $data_array. If the value of the string that was stored in $text was 123:456:789 then

$data_array[0] = 123
$data_array[1] = 456
$data_array[2] = 789

The : will be removed completey. Then you would insert the individual array values into your database however you want.

OhThanks, I have a form now that works pretty well. However sometimes not all the fields have information to be inputted. For example 123:456:789 text1 text2 text3 text4 is split just the way I want but if there is no data for the last text2 text3 or text4 I get this:
Notice: Undefined offset: 3 in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\swarm\insert2.php on line 25
That error only occurs when I don't have data for the last few text data that was split.

Is there a way to avoid this error when only a part of the data is inputted?
ANother thing I get is that there are 4 blank rows added before the data is added.

Again thanks for all your help.

Here is the code:

PHP Code:

<form  method="POST">
<textarea name="textareaname" rows="2" cols="20" accesskey="" tabindex="" 

></textarea>
<br><input type="Submit">
</form>
<?
$username="root";
$database="coords";
mysql_connect("localhost",$username);
mysql_select_db($database) or die( "Unable to select database");
$mydata = (isset($_POST['textareaname']))?$_POST['textareaname']:'';


$targettemp = split('/\n/', $mydata);
foreach($targettemp as $d ) {
    $d1 = split(" ", $d);
    $coords = $d1[0];
    $name = $d1[1];
    $owner = $d1[2];
    $defense = $d1[3];
    $comments = $d1[4];
    $query = "INSERT INTO planets VALUES 

('','$coords','$name','$owner','$defense','$comments')";
    mysql_query($query);
}
    mysql_close();

?>

THis is on my machine at home so no security risks using root and no password. I have a host that I make sure to use a password and the directory that has access is password protected.

I am happy to say that this matter is resolved THe fix was really simple actually. Here is what I had to do:
I changed this:

PHP Code:

$mydata = $_POST['textareaname']; 


to:

PHP Code:

$textareaname = 'textareaname';
$mydata = (isset($_POST['textareaname']))?$_POST['textareaname']:''; 


Now the form works great. Thanks for the help.

Glad you got it all worked out and glad I was able to help in some way.