Take all of the fields associated with one database record and give them all the same suffix. You can use a counter to generate suffixes. Add an additional hidden field to hold the number of records on the form. For example (using the data you provided):

<input type="hidden" name="userid_1" value="1">
<input type="text" name="firstname_1" value="Pedro"> -
<input type="text" name="lastname_1" value="Montoya"> -
<input type="text" name="email_1" value="pedro@motoya.net"> -
<input type="text" name="department_1" value="dept 7"> -
Admin <input type="checkbox" name="admin_1">
<br>
<input type="hidden" name="userid_2" value="2">
<input type="text" name="firstname_2" value="Lisa"> -
<input type="text" name="lastname_2" value="Brannigan"> -
<input type="text" name="email_2" value="lisa@hotmail.com"> -
<input type="text" name="department_2" value="dept 6"> -
Admin <input type="checkbox" name="admin_2" checked>

<input type="hidden" name="count" value="2">
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Process the returned data with something like this.

my $q = new CGI;
my $cnt = $q->param("count"); # validate for numeric and value in rang
+e
for my $sfx (1..$cnt) {
    my $userid = $q->param("userid_$sfx");
    my $first = $q->param("firstname_$sfx");
    my $last = $q->param("lastname_$sfx");
    my $email = $q->param("email_$sfx");
    my $dept = $q->param("department_$sfx");
    my $admin = $q->param("admin_$sfx");
    # validate all values above and update user record
}
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Since you're presenting many records to the user at one time, you will probably have to update all of your database records since there won't be any way to determine which were modified. You may be able to detect modifications with some javascript. If so, I would add a second hidden field for each record whose value could be changed by the javascript to indicate that the record needs an update.

---
print map { my ($m)=1<<hex($_)&11?' ':'';
$m.=substr('AHJPacehklnorstu',hex($_),1) }
split //,'2fde0abe76c36c914586c';
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You could encode the field names for each record with the corresponding primary key from the database, e.g. ...name="firstname.10123" default="Pedro" ... name="firstname.12139" default="Lisa"...

If the checkbox indicates a record to be changed, grep over $query->param for the common part of the checkbox names to extract the primary keys to look for.

This will make for large queries. It may be worthwhile to cook up some javascript to weed out unchanged fields on the client side.

Caution, that is very insecure. It is only suitable for ssl connections with authentication for admin. If just anybody could use this, the keys could be forged with ease.

After Compline,
Zaxo

Unless your user list is very very long it might be a good idea to just update every field for every record every time "submit" is pressed. I suspect the performance impact will be minimal, and you don't have to mess with JavaScript or anything hinky like that.

Gary Blackburn
Trained Killer

UPDATE table SET name="John Smith" WHERE id=1 will turn into a no-op if name is already set to "John Smith".

For very flexible values of no-op.

— Arien

Pedro - Montoya - pedro@motoya.net - dept 7 - admin [] #<~ checkbox
Lisa - Brannigan - lisa@hotmail.com - dept 6 - admin [x]
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[Pedro] - [Montoya] - [pedro@motoya.net] - [dept 7] - admin [] #<~ che
+ckbox
[Lisa] - [Brannigan] - [lisa@hotmail.com] - [dept 6] - admin [x]
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