Several Checkboxes sharing the same name

Question

According to the w3c \"Several checkboxes in a form may share the same control name. Thus, for example, checkboxes allow users to select several values for the same property.\"

Answer 1

That would never have worked without the [], not in PHP.

W3C don't specify anything about how query strings are handled server-side. (Ignoring an irrelevant, obsolete corner of the CGI spec, only relevant to PHP in that it was a security hole up until recently).

It looks like that pattern is valid markup, but not commonly used, for the reason you describe.

A similar pattern is used for radio buttons, of which only one can be selected at a time. (In fact, giving the radio inputs the same name is how the browser knows to treat them as a group). Perhaps that's what you were thinking of.