PHP array question

Question

Is it alright if I put the cat[] array value in the for, name and id attributes.

code.

<label for="cat[]">' . $cat['category'] . '</label>
<input type="checkbox" name="cat[]" id="cat[]" value="' . $cat['id'] . '" />

Rupert Madden-Abbott · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-20 01:25:57Z

1

Short Answer: No.

Long Answer

No because:

Square brackets are invalid characters for both the for and id attributes.
Using square brackets in the name attribute signals to php to create an array. This implies you have multiple form elements with the name cat[]. However, the id attribute must be unique. Therefore, you can't have the id and name equal. If you don't have a decent unique id for each checkbox then just increment cat. So the first checkbox would have an id of cat1, the second an id of cat2 and so on.
If you created multiple checkboxes with the same id attribute, your label elements would not know which inputs to point to as the for attribute cannot uniquely identify an input. This would create unpredictable behaviour and make it pointless to have a for attribute in the first place.

answered Aug 20, 2010 at 1:20

13.4k17 gold badges63 silver badges81 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Dejan Marjanović · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-20 01:19:35Z

1

No, just name (passed to server side), ID must be unique with no special characters and cannot start with a number.

answered Aug 20, 2010 at 1:19

Dejan Marjanović

19.4k7 gold badges54 silver badges67 bronze badges

Iznogood · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-20 01:19:02Z

0

From w3C

character "[" is not allowed in the value of attribute "for"

character "[" is not allowed in the value of attribute "id"

Try it out validator

answered Aug 20, 2010 at 1:19

Iznogood

12.9k3 gold badges28 silver badges44 bronze badges