Convention for posting arrays to php

I'm curious how people choose to post form arrays to php. For example if you had a few form elements you could do:

@foreach($things as $index => $thing)
    {{ Form::text("foo[$index]", $thing->foo) }}
    {{ Form::text("bar[$index]", $thing->bar) }}
@endforeach

which produces this in the POST:

array (size=2)
  'foo' => 
    array (size=6)
      1 => string '' (length=0)
      2 => string '' (length=0)
  'bar' => 
    array (size=6)
      1 => string '' (length=0)
      2 => string '' (length=0)

Or you could do:

@foreach($things as $index => $thing)
    {{ Form::text($index."[foo]", $thing->foo) }}
    {{ Form::text($index."[bar]", $thing->bar) }}
@endforeach

giving this in the post

array (size=2)
  1 => 
    array (size=2)
      'foo' => string '' (length=0)
      'bar' => string '' (length=0)
  2 => 
    array (size=2)
      'foo' => string '' (length=0)
      'bar' => string '' (length=0)

There are advantages in both ways. What do you use? I know this is a bit more than just a php question but has the PHP-FIG ever addressed this? Is there even a convention for this?

yunusis

11 years ago

Level 25

i almost everytime use {{ Form::text("foo[$index]", $thing->foo) }} seems to me better fit for every situation. Easier to loop through using indexes and easier to access each item on any level without a need to concatenate variable names . So even with multidimensional arrays i can access them $input[$i][$j] . But everyone is different i guess.

Please or to participate in this conversation.