Forum OpenACS Q&A: How to get the form data of a multi-value checkbox?

But obviously, if you can use Rolf's suggestion, go with that.

Well, ad_page_variables is available in OpenACS 3.2 and provides similar functionality, at least for this problem. ad_page_contract provides much greater functionality and is available in OpenACS 4.

>Wouldn't it be easier to just give each checkbox a unique name?

No, it would actually be a bit harder since you would have to write the code contained in ad_page_variables yourself.

What I hear you saying is if you had a list of employees, you would name each of the checkboxes something like emp-<id> (emp-123, etc). The page you were posting to would then look through all the form variables for those which name matched the above pattern and make a list of those id's. This is functionaly equivalent to naming them all emp_id and putting the id in the value of that form variable. But the point is, why not just use the abstraction already available to you? Besides, ad_page_variables provides some nice functionality while encouraging you to document your pages consistently.

suppose I click the checkbox with value id1,id2 and id4
in asp or jsp script, I can get the value of id as:
"id1, id2, id4"
but in formdata.tcl
with that set_the_usual_form_variables proc call,
I get a viable id with value "id4"
I want to get all the id list as:
{id1 id2 id4}
but how can I do?

ad_page_variables {
 {mytestvar -multiple-list}
}

Then you have the checkboxes be the same name as each other, but different values.

In the second page:

Specify that the variable is a multiple in the ad_page_contract.

Then foreach var multiple_variable_name {
  db_dml statement_name "insert into foo ..."
}