UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback Please bring back seperate fields for Name

Can you please bring back separate fields for First Name and Last Name. It make it easier to integrate other programs user may build around UBB that require it.

We had seperate fields for first and last names?

IMO, it's a waste of time... You can use a php function like explode or preg_split to seperate it into two values defined by the space (" ") which would split the value into an array which you could use to "read in" to other applications...

What if a name contains more than one space?

"Nobody will ever need more than 640Kb RAM!" -- Bill Gates, 1981.

And somehow somebody who made Lotus Notes thinks a middle name of 6 characters is more then sufficient.

Saying that you can simply search the one and only space might be true in your world and the names people have there, but it's not in ours here.

Double firstnames, double middlenames en double lastnames, not so uncommon in the Netherlands. There is no way hosee you can write software that can split up a dutch name in it's different parts. If you really try, you might get a 99% ok score. Even the human eye can't always tell from looking at it what's what.

^^ both make good points!

yah, i just thought of it.. names like 'van Cruijff' or.. 'van der hoovel'

edit.. i guess Cruijff has no VAN .. but you get my drift

Yep... But those are doable. "van de", "van der" etc are the middlenames that are pretty standard.

But Hans Frits Franken can be Hans Frits, with last name Franken, or it's Hans with last name Frits Franken.


He drives a normal car

lol... touche`

It's too bad we didn't build 5 custom fields so that users could add fields they felt necessary

forgot the </sarc> tag

it'd split it into as many fields as there are spaces; so 3 names would be an array with 3 names...

Fields are quite scaleable, theres no need to have a ton of fields when you can just split criteria into an array and read that into your script...

You can do a lot with array's, so it's not like it's not something that could be customized... In fact, you can use the 5 custom boxes for first and last names if you wanted to as is... Or you could use the name column and split the data as sugguested.

How would users go back to populate these custom field when users already entered names in the one Field for name.

Just seems strange to go to 1 field for name when programs are becoming so integrated and need First and Last name as a seperate field.

As said, that's not possible.

As for the 5 custom fields, loosing 3 of them just to store a name.

I fail to see how it wouldn't be possible... But, if you insist :/

You cannot simple divide up a name into first name, middle name and last name based on spaces.

Sure, you can get the individual words, but there's no way in telling which is which in all cases. A real life example is posted earlier in this topic (Hans Frits Franken).

So, yes. I insist.

Sure there is, calculate how many are there, assume the last is the last name, then take the rest as first through middle; bam, closest possible method to assume valid content...

Assume is the keyword here.

There is no way to tell if the that name in the middle is the middlename, part of the first name or part of the last name.

So, yes. I still insist.

Ok, give a user a ton of input boxes, read them all into one db field, seperate fields with |**| and strip that when you read it in... One input box, multiple names

There's an invention called seperate database fields which can do the same in an easier way

Anyway, point is proven that the suggestion by the topicstart is not a "IMO, it's a waste of time..." kind of suggestion.

You should have heard CC yelling at us before he left groupee on why you don't need hundreds of db cells when you can use one for things; but to each their own I suppose.

ok, agreed. But besides how you would implement it, a name storage that seperates first, middle and last name is a valid request.