HTML form with multiple hidden control elements of the same name

Question

Is it legal to have an HTML form with more than one \"hidden\" control element with the same name? I expect to get the values of all of these elements at the server. If it i

Answer 1

Different server-side technologies will vary. With PHP, you can use an array-style syntax for the name to force a collection to be created on the server-end. If posted to the server, $_POST['colors'] will be an array with two values, #003366 and #00FFFF:

Generally speaking, you'll want to use a standard name without square brackets. Most server-side technologies will be able to parse the resulting data, and provide a collection of some type. Node.js provides helpful functionality via querystring.parse:

const querystring = require('querystring')

querystring.parse('foo=bar&abc=xyz&abc=123') // { foo: 'bar', abc: ['xyz', '123'] }