How to combine two inputs into an array php

Question

I have a css table of multiple products with the same Quantity input name and Product ID input name. Every ID and Quantity are going to be different values

They look like this

<input type="number" name="quantity" value="0">
<input type="hidden" name="prod_id" value="<?php echo $product_id; ?>">

My question is how do I push both values in to an array/string that looks like this

 $product_ids = '150:2,152:4';

Product id first then Quantity number after the :

Answer 1

As @UlyssesMarx stated in the comments, you should modify the structure of your HTML input fields to support multiple quantity inputs.

<input type="number" name="quantity[<?php echo $product_id; ?>]" value="0">

In this case, you would not need the hidden input field for your product id, as it would be in stored in the name for the quantity field.

On the backend, you can parse this data via PHP.

$quantities = $_POST['quantity']; //make sure to sanitize and validate!

foreach( $quantities as $product_id => $qty ) {
   //do whatever you would like with this data
}

If you still wanted the data in the string you specified, one approach would be:

$quantities = $_POST['quantity']; //make sure to sanitize and validate!
$data = []; //empty array to hold restructured data

foreach( $quantities as $product_id => $qty ) {
    $data[] = $product_id . ":" . $qty;
}

//now combine the array
$string = implode( ',', $data );

echo $string;