[mx]

I'm trying to get a multiple selection box to submit it's values to PHP, encode them so they can be submitted into a database, and then retrieved and have the options reselected in the selection box.

So far the submission, encoding and retrieval is working fine, however the function I've created to reselect the options doesn't seem to understand the array.

Any ideas?

PHP Code:

<?
// if from has been posted
if ($_POST) {

    // Get array from select box
    $typeArray = array();
    foreach ($_POST['multi'] as $element) {
          $typeArray[] = $element;
    }

    // serialise array ready for submission to database
    $typeCom = serialize($typeArray);
    echo "<p>" . $typeCom . "</p>";
    
    // Unserialise array ready for use
    $typeNew = unserialize($typeCom);

    // Functio to reselect elements in selectbox based on array values
    function retrieveType($type) {
        foreach ($typeNew as $element) {
              if ($element == $type) {return "selected" ;}
        }
    }
}
?>

<fieldset>
<legend>Multiple Item Select</legend>

<form action="index.php" method="post">

<select name="multi[]" multiple="multiple">
<option value="one" <? if($_POST) { echo $i = retrieveType('one'); } ?>>one</option>
<option value="two" <? if($_POST) { echo $i = retrieveType('two'); } ?>>two</option>
<option value="three" <? if($_POST) { echo $i = retrieveType('three'); } ?>>three</option>
<option value="four" <? if($_POST) { echo $i = retrieveType('four'); } ?>>four</option>
<option value="five" <? if($_POST) { echo $i = retrieveType('five'); } ?>>five</option>
</select>

<input type="submit" value="submit" name="submit" />

</form>

</fieldset>

There's a live version here if that helps.

Cheers beers