Widget Form Loop Checkbox and Textbox Values

  • Resolved andrewhines

    (@andrewhines)


    6 years, 9 months ago

    So I am trying to make a widget that grabs all post categories, and loops through to make a checkbox and textbox inputs for each category, see my code so far below:

    $args = array(
    'post_type' => 'post',
    'taxonomy' => 'category',
);
$terms = get_terms( $args );
foreach( $terms as $id => $name ) {
    $checked = "";
    if(in_array($name->name,$instance['postCats'])){//check if category checkbox is checked and display as check if so
        $checked = "checked='checked'";
    }
    echo = '<input type="checkbox" class="checkbox" id="'.$this->get_field_id('postCats').'" name="'.$this->get_field_name('postCats[]').'" value="'.htmlentities($name->name).'" '.$checked.'/>
           <label for="'.$this->get_field_id('postCats').'">'.$name->name.'</label><br />';
    echo = '<input type="text" class="widefat" id="'.$this->get_field_id('postCatDI').'" name="'.$this->get_field_name('postCatDI[]').'" value="'.esc_attr("???What Goes Here???").'" /><br>';
}

    My problem is simply I can’t figure out what needs to go into the textbox value in order for the save to happen properly. I can get the checkboxes to save just fine, but the same method does not work for the textboxes.
    One thing that I did try already was separating the two inputs into their own loops, but then I ran into issues where php complained about undefined offsets for any empty textboxes.
    Any direction someone could give me would be great, thanks.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter andrewhines

    (@andrewhines)

    6 years, 9 months ago

    Ok, so I figured out that the textbox values were being saved, just not being displayed back on the form. so I added:

    $value = "";
if (!empty($instance['postCatDI'][$catDIcount])) {
    $value = $instance['postCatDI'][$catDIcount];
}

    And then added $value to the textbox value.
    Now my problem/confusion is in the database where this is all saved. For “postCats”, everything looks right, with only checked category names showing. But with “postCatDI” I get for example: “test01,,,test02,,” where all textboxes that weren’t filled in have an empty value in the database. This is an issue when I go to match these two inputs up, as the two arrays don’t share the same length.
    How can I either add the empty values to the checkbox, or remove them from the textbox? Thanks again.

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    6 years, 9 months ago

    Yeah, checkboxes are kinda annoying that way. You need to reprocess the the submitted data with code that knows all the available boxes and creates a boolean value for each that is then saved in the DB accordingly. A bit of a hassle, but it makes later processing easier when every box as an assigned value.

    Thread Starter andrewhines

    (@andrewhines)

    6 years, 9 months ago

    Thanks, I actually just got it working in a similar way. I added a [$catDIcount] to the end of the checkbox values that were saved, and then just used preg_split later in the actual widget() function to separate the category name and it’s index value, though your idea may have been a cleaner approach.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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