Unable to use array as form name in Wordpress

Question

In the PHP world, doing something along these lines in an HTML form is perfectly sane and normal:

<input type="text" name="data[name][first]" />
<input type="text" name="data[name][last]" />
<input type="text" name="data[address][street]" />
<input type="text" name="data[address][city]" />

Then, in your $_POST variable, you'll get an array similar to this:

data = array (
  'name' => array (
    'first' => value,
    'last' => value
  ),
  'address' => array (
    'street' => value,
    'city' => value
  )

You can then access them by using those names in the var, i.e. $firstName = $_POST['data']['name']['first'];.

My problem is that this doesn't work at all in Wordpress. The error I get is that the trim() function cannot be used on arrays.

I've traced "why" it does work to the following piece of code found in the parse_query function of the WP_Query object:

$qv['p'] =  absint($qv['p']);
        $qv['page_id'] =  absint($qv['page_id']);
        $qv['year'] = absint($qv['year']);
        $qv['monthnum'] = absint($qv['monthnum']);
        $qv['day'] = absint($qv['day']);
        $qv['w'] = absint($qv['w']);
        $qv['m'] = absint($qv['m']);
        $qv['paged'] = absint($qv['paged']);
        $qv['cat'] = preg_replace( '|[^0-9,-]|', '', $qv['cat'] ); // comma separated list of positive or negative integers
        $qv['pagename'] = trim( $qv['pagename'] );
        $qv['name'] = trim( $qv['name'] ); /* Throws trim() error on array! */
        if ( '' !== $qv['hour'] ) $qv['hour'] = absint($qv['hour']);
        if ( '' !== $qv['minute'] ) $qv['minute'] = absint($qv['minute']);
        if ( '' !== $qv['second'] ) $qv['second'] = absint($qv['second']);
        if ( '' !== $qv['menu_order'] ) $qv['menu_order'] = absint($qv['menu_order']);

Can anyone think of a way to properly use arrays for names of fields within WordPress? Seems like such a common practice outside of WP, yet impossible within it? Maybe there's a replacement 'best practices' for form names?

Can you post a var_dump($_POST) right before the line that throws that exception? Maybe WordPress is doing something to POST data and messes it up. — Sergiu Paraschiv
– Sergiu Paraschiv, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 22:45
If $qv['name'] is expected to be a string, passing an array to it is not going to work. Where do you expect the various parts of that array to end up? — IMSoP
– IMSoP, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 23:43
To WordPress, $qv['name'] might be expected to be a string, but I'm expecting the name element of the form to be an array, i.e. $_POST['data'] (with data itself being an array) — brazilianldsjaguar
– brazilianldsjaguar, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 23:51
I'm not clear on the relationship between $_POST and $qv: are you passing $_POST to a function, or is this something that gets processed on every page? Maybe you just need to pick names for your custom form parameters that don't already have a different meaning in Wordpress? — IMSoP
– IMSoP, Commented Sep 14, 2013 at 0:13
To be honest, I'm not sure of the relationship either - why sending data through a form within wordpress goes down the 'query' route. I assume it's got something to do with $_POST, but only because that's what I'm expecting and trying to access once the page reloads. There could be something else in the mix here. — brazilianldsjaguar
– brazilianldsjaguar, Commented Sep 14, 2013 at 7:01

brazilianldsjaguar · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-15 04:09:21Z

1

The solution came when I changed the name of the fields, particularly the 'base' of the array.

In the example I provided, it was data, which then had several elements. In this case, data happened to also be a custom post type that I registered with WordPress in my plugin. I don't know exactly what happened or why, but somewhere a long the line it mixed up my array with what was supposed to be queried, most likely because of the name conflict.

Problem solved!

answered Sep 15, 2013 at 4:09

brazilianldsjaguar

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