Using a loop to build and update widgets

Question

So I have a widget Im making which allows users to update 4 switches. Each switch has the same fields, name, description, price, amount so I decided to build the widget using a for loop instead of hard coding each field to avoid repeating myself.

I cant figure out how to save the values tho, because from teh tuts I've looked at for building widgets, the name field has to be $this->get_field_name which produces something like

widget-switches-widget[4][name]

So my form() function looks like

for($i =0; $i<4;$i++){
    $name = $instance[$i]['name'];  
    $description = $instance[$i]['description'];    
    $amount = $instance[$i]['amount'];  
    $price = $instance[$i]['price'];
?>

    <div id="<?php echo $i; ?>" class="switch_form" style="background-color:<?php echo $i%2 == 0 ? '': '#DFDFDF' ;?>; border-radius:4px; padding:5px;">
        <h4>Switch # <?php echo $i+1;?> </h4>
        <p>
            <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'name' ); ?>"><?php _e('Name:', 'Name'); ?></label>
            <input style ="width:90%;" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name($i); ?>['name']" value="<?php echo $name; ?>" />
        </p>
        <p>
            <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'description' ); ?>"><?php _e('Description:', 'Description'); ?></label>
            <input style ="width:90%;" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name($i); ?>['description']" value="<?php echo $description; ?>" />
        </p>
        <p>
            <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'amount' ); ?>"><?php _e('Amount:', 'Amount'); ?></label>
            <input style ="width:90%;" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name($i); ?>['amount']" value="<?php echo $amount; ?>" />
        </p>
        <p>
            <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'price' ); ?>"><?php _e('Price:', 'Price'); ?></label>
            <input style ="width:90%;" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name($i); ?>['price']" value="<?php echo $price; ?>" />
        </p>
    </div>
<?php
}

and my update() function looks like:

function update( $new_instance, $old_instance )
{
    $instance = $old_instance;

    for($i =0; $i<4;$i++){
        $instance[$i]['name'] = strip_tags( $new_instance[$i]['name'] );
        $instance[$i]['description'] = strip_tags( $new_instance[$i]['description'] );      
        $instance[$i]['amount'] = strip_tags( $new_instance[$i]['lights_fill'] );
        $instance[$i]['price'] = strip_tags( $new_instance[$i]['price'] );
    }
    return $instance;

}

How would I save these values into an array?

Answer 1

I am not sure I followed your code correctly, but you could try to set all data into one array:

name="unique_widget_name[<?php echo $this->get_field_name($i); ?>]['name']"

Very similar question, but not identical: How to store widget fields data as an array?