What Is The Expected Order Of An Array Submitted In An Html Form?

I'm wondering if there is any sort of guarantee on the order of POST variables I will see on the server side. My use case is I have a form that a user will fill out to enter a list

Solution 1:

why not add a grouping key like:

<td><inputtype='text'name='user[0][name]' /></td><td><inputtype='text'name='user[0][email]' /></td></tr><tr><td><inputtype='text'name='user[1][name]' /></td><td><inputtype='text'name='user[1][email]' /></td>

and then manuall set the user indexes when you clone based on the current number. This way everything is already coallated.

Solution 2:

What is the expected order of an array submitted in an HTML form?

According to the HTML specification:

The control names/values are listed in the order they appear in the document

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#form-content-type

However, it's better coding practice to employ an indexed array approach as shown in prodigitalson's answer.

Solution 3:

Data will appear in same order like in form. So first row have key 0, second row - 1.

Solution 4:

As Vaidas Zilionis said, data will appear in exact the same order as they appear in the form, see the W3C's HTML 4.01 Specification:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded[...] 2. The control names/values are listed in the order they appear in the document.

multipart/form-data[...] A "multipart/form-data" message contains a series of parts, each representing a successful control. The parts are sent to the processing agent in the same order the corresponding controls appear in the document stream.