[Zope] Insert Help

[Dieter Maurer]

Todd Loomis writes:
 > I want to insert to a database a id and a option, however each id can have 
 > more than one option.  And  I want them inserted separately to make 2 records.
 > 
 > The form will be checkboxes they check all the options they want and they 
 > all get save in the database seperately but with the same id. I've tried to 
 > no luck. Can anybody help?
Some basic observations:

  ZSQL Method bodies are DTML objects. You use DTML there to generate
  SQL in the same way you use DTML usually to generate HTML.
  Especially, you have the "dtml-in" in order to iterate over
  sequences.

  A ZSQL Method can generate and execute several SQL commands.
  These commands need to be separated by "<dtml-var sql_delimiter>".

Thus, you use something like:

      <dtml-in options>
        insert into ...
	<dtml-unless sequence-end><dtml-var sql_delimiter></dtml-unless>
      </dtml-in>

You need to be a bit careful with your options in the form.
It should probably contain something like:

   <input type="hidden" name="options:list" value="dummy">
   ...
   <input type="checkbox" name="options:list" value="...">
   ...

The hidden variable ensures that you always get something for options.
The ":list" ensures that the case of a single option leads to a list
as well as multiple options.
When you use the hidden variable approach as shown above, then
your options list contains a bogus first element. You need to drop
it again. The "dtml-in options" above becomes 'dtml-in expr="options[1:]"'.


Dieter