Iterating through a form's $_POST

[eluser]Scott - Beyond Coding[/eluser]
Michael, pyro, Rick.. thanks for all your replies. It's very interesting to see how others tackle the same problem

I often use a similar approach to pyro although I also specify the type of field and then typecast anything that should be an integer or bool.. Something along the lines of this (keeping with the same example variables):

Code:

$fields = array('numbers' => array('catID'),
            'text' => array('cat_name', 'cat_description'));

foreach($fields['text'] as $field)
    $user_input[$field] = $this->input->post($field, true);

foreach($field['numbers'] as $field)
    $user_input[$field] = (int) $this->input->post($field, true);

I think Rick's idea of setting and checking $fields as per the validation library that could be a much neater solution though (as you can set validation rules to handle numbers appropriately etc). Could also cycle through $rules too provided you've set rules for everything