I have been using the jquery serialize() function to serialize the values of a form and submit it via ajax
like for e.g. if the form name and id is factoryUsers
var data=$("#factoryUsers").serialize();
Now this works fine for forms that have text fields, text areas, simple drop downs etc. But when I have a multiple dropdown , things go awry for e.g. if I have a dropdown of the type
<select size="5" id="factoryUsers" name="factoryUsers" multiple="multiple">
the serialize doesn't work correctly anymore. so if I select 3 users I get a query string like
factoryUsers=5&factoryUsers=23&factoryUsers=11
changing the select to array type doesn't help either factoryUsers[]
Any idea or help how to get this working correctly would be great.
Try changing the name of the select to factoryUsers[]. That way you can loop through it in your backend.
The string output you've described above is the correct way of submitting multiple values for forms with the same name over HTTP, so jQuery is working correctly. It's up to you to handle how this is processed on the server-side, which is then dependent on what language you are using.
If you're using PHP, this may help: http://bytes.com/topic/php/answers/12267-how-php-_post-gets-multiple-values-html-form
Can you tell us what language you're using?
All you need is change name="factoryUsers" to name="factoryUsers[]" PHP will treat it as array.