jQuery Custom Select plugin - how do I get the values from the multi-select via POST?

Thanks for looking at this. Ref: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/customselectbox

I find this mind boggling because it seems like this makes the plugin rather useless, but this plugin doesn't seem to provide any built in method of retrieving the selected value.  What most of these plugins do is just hide the standard HTML select element and when you pick a value in the styled element it updates the hidden element, and then the hidden element is what actually gets POSTed when you submit the form.  In this case however, it doesn't hide the select element, it actually removes it from the page and replaces it with the styled element, so when the form is submitted the select element doesn't exist - hence no results in your $_POST.

So, 3 choices really in order of easiest to most difficult:
1) Pick a different plugin
2) Hack the plugin to hide the select instead
3) Use AJAX to submit your form and some custom JS to get the value that's selected

Take your pick and I'll do my best to walk you through it.

Thanks for that - so I'm not losing my mind. I was rather baffled by it as well. Most of the other jQuery stuff that I have run into is quite solid.

I will fish around for another plugin before traveling down the more time consuming routes (though thank you very much for offering to walk me through a hack or an AJAX submit). I might try contacting the guy that wrote the plugin.

I really need a multi-select capability. Check boxes and radio buttons add to much clutter (if you have lots of options as I do). Anyhow... thanks.

The author of the plugin responded with this:

This is the html that is generated when the plug in is created. If you look you can see that there is a hidden input tag. This is where the value of the select box would get passed on the request.

<div class="select_wrap"><div class="selectbox selectboxopen"><ul><li>Sample Selection Long Version</li></ul></div><div class="selectboxoptions_wrap" style="display: block;"><ul class="selectboxoptions_radio" style="width: 230px;"><li class="  hideitem"><span class="elmValue">1</span>Option One</li><li class="selected hideitem"><span class="elmValue">2</span>Option Two</li><li class="  hideitem"><span class="elmValue">3</span>Option Three</li><li class="  hideitem"><span class="elmValue">4</span>Option Four</li></ul><div class="selectboxfoot"><div style="width: 173px;"/></div><input type="hidden" value="2" name="sample_select" id="" disabled=""/></div></div>

This is the multi select there is a hidden input for each value all have the same name so on the request it would come over as an array.

<div class="select_wrap"><div class="selectbox selectboxopen"><ul><li>Sample Selection</li></ul></div><div class="selectboxoptions_wrap" style="display: block;"><ul class="selectboxoptions_check" style="width: 154px;"><li class="  hideitem"><span class="elmValue">1</span>Option One<input type="hidden" value="" name="sample_select_0" id="_0" disabled=""/></li><li class="selected hideitem"><span class="elmValue">2</span>Option Two<input type="hidden" value="2" name="sample_select_1" id="_1" disabled=""/></li><li class="  hideitem"><span class="elmValue">3</span>Option Three<input type="hidden" value="" name="sample_select_2" id="_2" disabled=""/></li><li class="  hideitem"><span class="elmValue">4</span>Option Four<input type="hidden" value="" name="sample_select_3" id="_3" disabled=""/></li></ul><div class="selectboxfoot"><div style="width: 97px;"/></div></div></div>

Hm that's interesting, guess I missed that.  If you do a var_dump($_POST) the values are no where in there?

I will try var_dump($_POST).

Yesterday, I played around with the code for about an hour and then I caved-in and just sent the author of the plugin another email. It really shouldn't be so hard.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Your var_dump command allowed me to figure it out. The data was coming through not as an array but as $cat_0 $cat_1 $cat_2 etc. Anyhow it all  works now. Thanks very much.

I shoved all the data into an array like this
$Category[0] = $_POST['Category_0'];
$Category[1] = $_POST['Category_1'];
$Category[2] = $_POST['Category_2'];

All is well. Thanks again.