Keeping track of dynamically generated form elements and passing them as POST variables

I have a page that retrieves records from 1 table in a database when a certain condition is met.

What I want to achieve is to provide the use to with an opportunity to update each record displayed using text boxes.

I am having trouble interpreting what logic to proceed with after the user hits the 'submit' button.

Normally, if I'm updating one record (or a static number of records), I will use the apporpriate amount of SQL statements.

Since the amount of records are dynamically generated, what is the best way to update all at once? How would I know which records wer开发者_运维百科e retrieved in the first place to update?

FOR EXAMPLE:

OK, We have a table with student ids (ID), names (SNAME), subjects (SUBJ), grade for each subject (GRADE) and general remarks (COMMENTS).

I want to retrieve information about all students that got an 'A', and write UNIQUE congratulatory remarks for each student (such as 'good job', or 'congratulations', or etc.)

I'd retrieve the records and lay them out on the page, with a text box next to each student record for the comments to be entered. Because I don't know how many text boxes to make, I give the text boxes dynamically generated names using the student ID. The user now enters unique comments for each student, and clicks on submit.

Now, how am I supposed to update these records with the values entered in each text box?

I wouldn't know which students were retrieved in the first place - how would I know what names to use? I'm trying to avoid having to execute the query again after submitting - but is there any other way?

Hope this question was not too confusing.

thanks

Further expanding earlier answers: You need a loop (e.g. foreach) to display and save the textareas. If the names of the textareas include the students ID, you don't need to know the name, because the text is inserted to the database by the primary key (the students ID). You may name your form-elements as array, to iterate over them, for example (where the numbers are the IDs):

<textarea name="comment[2345234]"></textarea>
<textarea name="comment[8957485]"></textarea>

Read it out as described by @evan:

foreach((array)$_POST['comment'] as $studentId => $studentComment)
{
    var_dump($studentId, $studentComment);
}

And if you implement this whole thing as self-requesting form (Affenformular in german), you may also use just one single loop to save and output the textareas.

"I don't think you're understanding what I'm trying to ask." Maybe you don't understand the answers, even you stated it. You don't need a students name to save a database record. But if you really want to submit it, you may also use hidden inputs.

Use foreach() to find the values you care about, put them in an array, and process the array.

Expanding on @Ignacio's answer to make it more easily understandable:

foreach($_POST as $name_of_input => $value_of_input)
{
    // do stuff - here is something so you can see the results after the submit
    echo "$name_of_input :: $value_of_input <br>";
}