ColdFusion not recognizing comma delimiters

Question

I have a form with checkboxes that need to be processed I want to loop through each selected option but I can't seem to make ColdFusion recognize the HTML checkbox fields as a list

So if someone selected option 1 and 2 I should be able to loop through the comma separated list of submitted values . however it keep selecting the whole string as a single entry, despite the comma delimiters

Example:

<form action="" method="get">
<input name="test" type="checkbox" value="1" checked="checked" />Option1<br>
<input name="test" type="checkbox" value="2" checked="checked" />Option2<br>
<input name="test" type="checkbox" value="3" checked="checked" />Option3<br>
<input name="test" type="checkbox" value="4" checked="checked" />Option4<br>
<input name="" type="submit" />
</form>


<cfif IsDefined("test")>
<cfoutput> lenght: #len(test)#<br>
#test#
</cfoutput><br />
<cfloop index="i" list = "#test#" delimiters="," >           
        <cfoutput>#i# ---#test#<br /></cfoutput>
</cfloop>
</cfif>

returns:

lenght: 7 
1,2,3,4 
1 ---1,2,3,4
2 ---1,2,3,4
3 ---1,2,3,4
4 ---1,2,3,4

(I'm using ColdFusion 10 dev edition)

Answer 1

You are misreading your code. It's working:

1. exactly as expected;
2. exactly as you want it to!

When you reference form.test, it will be a list of all the values you have selected in the checkboxes. EG: if you've checked them all, then the value will be 1,2,3,4

You are demonstrating this to yourself with this bit of your code:

 <cfoutput>#i# ---#test#<br /></cfoutput>

You're seeing ---1,2,3,4. IE: form.test contains 1,2,3,4

When one loops over a list like this:

<cfloop index="i" list = "#test#" delimiters="," >

Then i will take each element value of the list in turn. And you are also seeing this.

And the length of form.test is indeed 7: "1,2,3,4" is seven chars. listLen() would give you 4.

Finally, some coding suggestions:

• scope your variables: form.test not test
• do not use isDefined(), use structKeyExists()
• I know this is sample code, but i is a poor variable name in this context (and probably confusing you), checkBoxValue might be better. Or something that indicates what the checkbox represents.
• if your delimiter is a comma, you do not need to specify it in list operations (functions, loops, etc). Comma is already the default.

Answer 2

You are doing it correctly. You have to use variable in INDEX attribute (i in this case). If your CHECKBOXES has values of 23,12,78,56. Then I would return those values in each iteration. Look like you are being confused with "i" giving iteration counter value.

Answer 3

What's the problem here? Firstly the length is 7, because you're treating it as a string by using the len() function.

If however you want to find out how many list items are in it, you can use ListLen instead e.g. length: #listlen(test)#

Secondly are you trying to get the value of each list item as you loop over it? By outputting #test# each time you're just outputting the entire list. Instead you can simply output #i#