Get values from multiple select boxes with same name? Including its value with jquery and php

Question

I have looked for answers on here and have not found anything that directly can help me so I am going to ask here. I have a form with multiple select boxes:

<select name="acabados[]">
<option value="1">ABC</option>
<option value="2">DEF</option>
<option value="3">GHI</option>
</select>

<select name="acabados[]">
<option value="1">ABC</option>
<option value="2">DEF</option>
<option value="3">GHI</option>
</select>

As you can see they are the exact same select box. I have told the client to use select multiple but he wants it this way. The user can add as many as these select boxes as they desire (so it could be up to 20 select boxes at a time) and I need to get the value (1 or 2 or 3) and the text inside the option. It is then an array that I need to break down cause I need to add the total values of the select boxes in php. I could either use jquery for collecting the values or php, which ever is easier. Thank you in advance for any help!!

Answer 1

Try this, it will work for dynamically created select elements too.

$(document).on('change', 'select[name="acabados[]"]', function(){
    var total = 0;
    $('select[name="acabados[]"]').each(function(){
        total += parseInt($(this).val());
    });
});

total var will contain the total of all the select elements selected value.

Answer 2

$(function () {
    var $select = $('select');
    $select.on('change', function () {
        var output = 0;
        for (var i = 0, len = $select.length; i < len; i++) {
            output += parseInt($select.eq(i).val());
        }
        //the `output` variable now contains the addition of all the values from the `acabados[]` select elements
    });
});

Here is a demo: http://jsfiddle.net/aPXXA/1/

You can change var $select = $('select'); to var $select = $('[name="acabados[]"]'); to only select the select elements with the acabados[] name attribute.

Answer 3

If you want to retrieve the values in PHP, you can just use $_POST['acabados'] and it will contain all the values selected in each menu. See a demo. As long as you include the [] after the name, it will compound all the values for any element with that name into a single array. You can even mix select menus, inputs, and textareas together!

Answer 4

Why not just give them different id's and do the count in jquery/javascript. Alternatively give them all the same class, and do .each() to grab the values in all of them.