[pmwiki-users] multiple values for a single form element

[Ben Stallings]

Note: this appears to be a PHP issue, but it affects PmWiki, so I 
thought some of you might have some insight to share.

I've been working on a pretty complex database front-end for a client, 
using my UpdateForm recipe.  One limitation I've run into is that 
although I can create a form where a single form element has multiple 
values -- for example a set of checkboxes with the same name or a select 
box with the "multiple" parameter turned on -- and although these values 
do in fact get submitted with the form, they don't seem to be accessible 
to PHP.

For example, if my form contains

(:input checkbox potato yellow:)Yellow (:input checkbox potato red:)Red

and both boxes are checked and the form is submitted via method=get, the 
data string will look like

?potato=yellow&potato=red

but $_GET['potato'] will be 'red'.  The first value appears to be 
overwritten by the second.  The reason this puzzles me is that I used to 
write in Embedded Perl (which is similar to PHP) years ago and was able 
to access that information as an array... and we've all filled out forms 
online that allowed multiple rows to be selected in a select box, so 
clearly someone is able to make it work.  And the reason it matters is 
that it's the easiest way to get data into and out of a SET datatype in 
MySQL.

Do any of you happen to know offhand if there's a way to allow the $_GET 
and $_POST variables to retain multiple submitted values with the same 
name?  Maybe it's some sort of PHP setting I'm unaware of.  Or perhaps 
there's another way to access that information besides 
$_GET/$_POST/$_REQUEST?  Thanks in advance!  --Ben