User Guide

Creating dynamic check boxes and multiple-selection list boxes 629
<cfinput type="checkbox"
name="SelectedDepts"
value="Sales">
Sales<br>
If the user checked Marketing and Sales, the value of the SelectedDepts form field would be the
list Marketing,Sales and you use the following SQL statement:
SELECT *
FROM Departmt
WHERE Dept_Name IN
(#ListQualify(Form.SelectedDepts,"'")#)
In SQL, all strings must be surrounded in single-quotation marks. The ListQualify function
returns a list with the specified qualifying character (here, a single-quotation mark) around each
item in the list.
If you select the second and fourth check boxes in the form, the following statement gets sent to
the database:
SELECT *
FROM Departmt
WHERE Dept_Name IN ('Marketing','Sales')
Multiple selection lists
A multiple-selection list box is defined by a
select or cfselect tag with a multiple or
multipe="yes" attribute and a size attribute value greater than 1. ColdFusion treats the result
when a user selects multiple choices from a multiple-selection list box like the results of selecting
multiple check boxes. The data made available to your page from any multiple-selection list box is
a comma-delimited list of the entries selected by the user; for example, a list box could contain the
four entries: Training, Marketing, HR, and Sales. If the user selects Marketing and Sales, the form
field variable value is Marketing,Sales.
You can use multiple-selection lists to search a database in the same way that you use check boxes.
The following sections describe how you can use different types of multiple-selection data values.
Handling numeric values
Suppose you want the user to select departments from a multiple-selection list box. The query
retrieves detailed information on the selected department(s), as follows:
Select one or more companies to get more information on:
<cfselect name="SelectDepts" multiple>
<option value="1">Training
<option value="2">Marketing
<option value="3">HR
<option value="4">Sales
</cfselect>