Can radio button name attribute have numeric value

Question

Not sure if the question title is clear enough - but what I was referring to is - is it a bad practice to give a numeric value say 102 to the name attribute of a radio button like

<input type="radio" name="102" value="2032" /> Hello World

If it is a bad idea - the how do I handle this situation. I have a multiple choice exam where all 60 questions are displayed on the page at once.

The questions are stored in a question array and for each question - the multiple choices are stored in an answer array

This is the for loop which generates the 60 questions with their multiple choice answers - right now I'm using question_id as the value for radio buttons

<?php
$question_ids = array_keys($this->question_array);
foreach($question_ids as $question_id) 
{
    $question = $this->question_array[$question_id];
    $answers = $this->answer_array[$question_id];
?>
    <div> 
        <strong>Q) <?php echo $question['question'];?></strong>         
    <div>
        <?php foreach ($answers as $answer) { ?><br/>
        <input type="radio" name="<?php echo $question_id;?>" value="<?php echo $answer['answer_id'];?>" /> <?php echo $answer['answer'];?>
        <?php } ?>          
    </div>
    </div>
<?php 
} ?>

So I have assigned name with question_id and value with answer_id - so on server side - I will know for which question which answer option was selected - needless to say they are unique autogenerated id's from the database

foreach ($_POST as $key => $value)
    echo "For question id ".htmlspecialchars($key)." answer selected is ".htmlspecialchars($value)."<br>";

If assigning number is a bad idea - why is that. The other option for me is to assign a name value like name="questionId-102" and on the server side parse it.

Let me know what is the best way to handle this. Thanks

casraf · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-25 11:44:17Z

2

A better practice would be to put it in an array of questions:

<?php foreach ($answers as $answer) { ?><br/>
<input type="radio" name="questions[<?=$question_id;?>]" value="<?=$answer['answer_id'];?>" /> <?=$answer['answer'];?>

And:

foreach ($_POST['questions'] as $key => $value)
    echo "For question id ".htmlspecialchars($key)." answer selected is ".htmlspecialchars($value)."<br>";

answered Jun 25, 2013 at 11:44

casraf

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1 Comment

Gublooo Over a year ago

Thanks - much cleaner option too

Vasandkumar · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-25 11:42:18Z

You can use a simple string before the name in case you want a series or sequence of numbers. It is not advisable to use number as name for an element. Try using the following code

<?php
$question_ids = array_keys($this->question_array);
foreach($question_ids as $question_id) 
{
    $question = $this->question_array[$question_id];
    $answers = $this->answer_array[$question_id];
?>
    <div> 
        <strong>Q) <?php echo $question['question'];?></strong>         
    <div>
        <?php foreach ($answers as $answer) { ?><br/>
        <input type="radio" name="question_<?php echo $question_id;?>" value="<?php echo $answer['answer_id'];?>" /> <?php echo $answer['answer'];?>
        <?php } ?>          
    </div>
    </div>
<?php 
} ?>

You can then use explode() function to get the question id for further process by using '_' as delimiter and second element of the array as question id.

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