This should be SO simple but need expert advice... php and mysql

PHP
1

Here’s my script:
$sqlCommand = “SELECT * FROM events”;
$query = mysql_query($sqlCommand) or die (mysql_error());
$num = mysql_num_rows($query);
if ($num > 0)
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)){
$pid = $row[“id”];
$title = $row[“title”];
$displayorder = $row[“displayorder”];
echo "<h7>$title</h7>
<h4>Display Order</h4>

	&lt;form action='change_order_parse.php' method='post'&gt;
	&lt;input name='$pid' type='text' value='$displayorder' size='5' /&gt;
	
	&lt;p&gt;current ID is: $pid&lt;/p&gt;
	&lt;input type='submit' value='Change Order' /&gt;
	&lt;/form&gt;

As you can see, I am listing the title of the event then I’m listing the ID of that row (variable of $pid). I also have a row called displayorder and have made a variable of that. Then I show the title and name the text field the ID ($pid). I then display the current order that particular event is displayed.

What I would like to do is for my user then change the display order since on the display page I am calling from MySql to order by display order ASC.

My problem is, since I’m naming my text field $pid (ID) and it’s in a fetch array, once I send it to my parse.php I can’t very well declare a new variable using $pid since it’s in a fetch array.

Hence I can’t update mysql because I can’t get the info into a variable as I would like. I tried to echo $pid for the name and that didn’t work.

Or perhaps I should scrap this method completely and someone else may have a better idea of how I can list the title of the event then change the order (displayorder in my database).

Like I said, it should be very simple to change that one item but it has me scratching my head. Right now there’s only 5 events so it’s not a huge database at this point. But the while loop was the easiest way for me to list everything there.

Thoughts?

2

OK. I need to scrap this way of doing this completely so need other ideas. It dawned on my I was echo’ing $pid so when I looked for it in the parse script it wasn’t seeing $pid it was seeing 13 which was the value of $pid (did a limit of 1 for testing). Now there’s no way of me knowing a year from now what the value of a certain ID is going to be so no way to call for it when I parse the data.

Who has a great plan for me being able to change the order of display (displayorder in my database)? Other than the obvious just going in there and doing it myself. This is a CMS and needs to be idiot proof for office workers.

3

You’re using the input name as a variable where it should be a constant (so you know what it is). Input fields go by name/value pairs. When you process them, you grab the value that is associated with that name. What you should have is name=“DisplayOrder” value=“$displayOrder” If you need to access the $pid variable, you could use input type=“hidden” name=“pid” value=“$pid”

Then, in your parse script you can use $pid=$_POST[‘pid’]; $displayOrder=$_POST[‘DisplayOrder’];