Cakephp 3 - select not submitted if no selection is made - cakephp

Question

I have a form ( generated using the form helper ) with this select input
<div class="input select">
<label for="pilot-ratings">Pilot Ratings</label>
<select name="pilot_ratings" class="listbox" size="5" id="pilot-ratings">
<option value="1">Habilitación de Vuelo Nocturno Local</option>
<option value="3">Habilitación Cat. II / Cat. III</option>
<option value="5">Habilitación de Remolque de Planeador</option>
</select>
</div>
Only when an option is selected, that option is added to $this->request->data['pilot_ratings'].
Is there any way to force submitting all of the options of the select input every time no matter an option is selected or not ?
Thanks.
Regards.

Answer 1

How are you moving options between the select boxes?
to automatically submit an option you need to add selected="selected" attribute to the <option> element. To submit many options in a select box in the form you need to add multiple to the <select> element
if you want to automatically submit all options in the list on page load it would need to look like this
<select name="pilot_ratings" class="listbox" size="5" id="pilot-ratings" multiple>
<option value="1" selected="selected">Habilitación de Vuelo Nocturno Local</option>
<option value="3" selected="selected">Habilitación Cat. II / Cat. III</option>
<option value="5" selected="selected">Habilitación de Remolque de Planeador</option>
</select>
this can be acheived using the cakephp Form helper like:
<?= $this->Form->input('pilot_ratings',[
'type' => 'select',
'class' => 'listbox',
'size' => 5,
'id' => 'pilot_ratings',
'multiple' => 'multiple',
'options' => [
['name' => 'Habilitación de Vuelo Nocturno Local', 'value' => '1', 'selected' => 'selected'],
['name' => 'Habilitación Cat. II / Cat. III', 'value' => '2', 'selected' => 'selected'],
['name' => 'Habilitación de Remolque de Planeador', 'value' => '5', 'selected' => 'selected']
]
]); ?>
Havent tested the syntax of the form helper code but it is the right idea.
One thingI just thought about is how you read the data after the form has been submitted. The data will still be submitted like:
pilot_ratings=1
pilot_ratings=3
pilot_ratings=5
By default I think (havnt actually tested this) $this->request->data['pilot_ratings']; will only hold one of these values, either the 1st one-or the last one as it keeps overwritting itself.
If this that is the case you may need to change the form method to get
and then extract all the values from the query string which you can get from:
$this->request->here();