HTML Form - submit array of ID's of selected divs - html

Question

I have an array of divs which can be selected (change background colour on click to signify that to the user).
I want a way to submit the ids of all of these divs to my app, though can't see a 'nice' way of doing this; at the moment the only thing I can see to do is have a button that onclick triggers a javascript function that gets the id's and sends them back to my server in a POST.
Is there a way of creating a multiple select input on a form which uses divs instead of checkboxes or a multi-select list, or a better way of doing what I'm attempting?

Answer 1

Assuming you add the class selected when a user 'selects' the div:
var data = {};
$(".classOfDivs.selected").each(function(){
data[$(this).prop('id')] = 'true';
}
$.ajax({
url : 'ajaxPage.php',
type : 'POST',
dataType : 'text',
cache: false,
data: data,
success : function(text){alert('Saved: '+text);},
error: function(){alert('Did not reach server');}
});
Use the success function to process the returned text as needed. dataType can be changed to html, JSON, etc. See the .ajax() documentation.

Answer 2

Have a hidden input for each div, all with the same name but with a different id. When a div is clicked update the corresponding hidden input with the id. Then when you submit through a standard form POST all of those values will be available through the name you specified.

Answer 3

Since this is an app, what you could do is store everything in HTML5 localstorage using the JQuery javascript library.
Here's how to do it step by step:
Create a jquery array
on click, get div id and store it in the array with a key/value pair
if clicked again, remove it from the array
have some event listener like a "submit" button to store the value of your array to localstorage
Here is a jsfiddle I had that has exactly what you are talking about: http://jsfiddle.net/CR47/bqfXN/1/
It goes into a little more depth but the jquery should be exactly what you need.
The reason this is better than submitting with POST or using ajax is because since you say this is an app, you will be able to use this method offline, where as post or ajax would require a connection to a server running php.
var skinCare=[]; //the array
$('.skinCare').click(function(){ //onclick
var value = event.target.className.split(" ")[0]; //get classname, you would get id
var index = skinCare.indexOf(value); //gets where the location in
//the array this code is
if($(this).hasClass('selected')){ //when a div is clicked it gets
//$('.skinCare').removeClass('selected'); //the class "selected" and adds
skinCare.splice(index, 1); //to array, then another click
} else if($.inArray(value, skinCare) == -1){ //removes it from array
skinCare.push(value);
}
});
$('.submitbutton').click(function(){
localStorage.setItem('Skin Care', JSON.stringify(skinCare));
});