Input in forms and file upload problems

Anon

I have 2 problems:

Formatted input in forms

I am building our organizations new homepage and want the employees tobe able to sumbit news, information in a form. I have created the form but in the provided textarea I'd like to give the writers the abiblity to use newlines. When I read the form and put it in the database it is read as one string and when I output the text on the page the newlines arent there.
How Can I make the system see, when they submit their text, that they entered a break so I can put in a html break.

File upload

I also like to provide the posibility do upload a document along with the text they type in. It works fine do upload the dokument in a temporary library.

The problem is that I like to name the document with database information, ie if the document are #50 and the employee #3 from organization #21 writes the document, the filename should be /mydocroot/DATE_ORGID_PERSONID_DOCID.

I do an insert operation and the documentation id is NULL(auto_increment in MySQL) so I don't know what id that document have.

Any help is appreciated.

// Åke Jönsson <ake.jonsson@toreboda.se>

Anon

Ake (sorry if I mis-spelled it 🙂

I have a suggestion for question 1. What you can do is convert the line breaks to some Special character (or just leave them as-is). The textarea result is passed as one string to the PHP (include the \n and \r characters as newline and linefeed characters). So you can just leave the text as it is in the database (with the \n and \r character).

When you output this text, use str_replace or an equivalent function to convert the \n character to the <br> tag. I suppose you can leave out the \r characters since linefeeds don't affect HTML output in browsers.

If I'm not exactly giving you a solution, it may be because I didn't understand your problem correctly. So please feel free to contact me if you have even more specific details.

For question 2: I'm no clear on the part where you said:

"I do an insert operation and the documentation id is NULL(auto_increment in MySQL) so I don't know what id that document have."

Do you mean that you have two IDs for the document? One in MySQL and one in /mydocroot/name_org_pers_DOCiD?

You can keep a separate column in the MySQL database for "Document Name". In that column, store the filename "/mydocroot/name_orgid_employeeid_DOCiD". If you want to find out the last document number the employee uploaded, you can....maybe create a separate file or database table which keeps info like this:

employeeID | Last document ID number

that way, you can access this file/database to figure out the last ID and use that ID + 1 to give and ID for the new document they upload. Then increment the ID on the database or file.

hope this help!
Sridhar

Anon

Thanks for your help, Sridhar.

I think your suggestion on #1 solve my problem. I didnt know the "\n" was included in the string.. blush

I will try to be more clear on #2.

I dont have 2 ID's for the document, but can't set the same ID as I dont know what ID it gets when saved in the databse.

When a user have created a document and uploaded it, I do a insert statement to a mysql table, saving info about filename, author, time and so on. When the user uploads the file, it lies in a temp directory and have the original filename, for example "mydoc.doc".

Two users can upload two documents with the same filename, so I like to move that uploaded document to my "doc area", and renaming it so the filename become for example "<userid>_DOCiD",
where DOCiD is the id it gets in the database table after the INSERT action.(id is a primary key in that table)

The problem is: How do I find out what id the document gets? Is there a return value from MySQL that says(in a way) "You added a post in this table and in the table that row got id=#"

Or do I have to search the table for the last known ID and do what you propose: ID+1.

I'd rather come up with a way where I dont have to search the table and spare the extra time an extra search does..

Hope that was clear enough ;-)

Anon

Okay, I understand more clearly now....

I have one more question. Is the database that stores the filenames common for all employees? (I mean, will each employee have their own private table?)

I suppose you want to create a common database that store documents for all employees.
So you can use the mysql_insert_id function.

Lets suppose this situation:

Employee 1 uploads a document
- Do an insert to append at the end of the database.
- This being the first document, gets ID #1
Employee 2 uploads a document
- Do an append to the database.
- Call the mysql_inset_id function and that function returns the ID of the last append. In this case it will return 2.
- Use 2 as the document ID when renaming the temporary filename
Employee 1 again uploads a document
- Do an append...
- Call the mysql_insert_id function. It will return 3
- Use that as the document ID when renaming the file.

So finally here is how the filename will look like:

mydoc_orgID_employee1_1.doc
mydoc_orgID_employee2_2.doc
mydoc_orgID_employee1_3.doc

So employee 1 has document IDs 1 and 3
employee 2 has document ID 1

NOTE: I have not yet tried the mysql_insert_id function, so I don't know whether it will really output what I assumed it to. Please try it on a test database to see if it works; I don't want to mess up your databases!

I hope this will work,
Sridhar

Anon

Or do I have to search the table for the last known ID and do what
you propose: ID+1.
I'd rather come up with a way where I dont have to search the table
and spare the extra time an extra search does..

The problem posed by the extra time for the search is nothing
compared with the problem that this is not guaranteed to work
unless you lock the table during the entire time.

The correct way to get this information is to call mysql_insert_id().
Reading right from the manual:

  int mysql_insert_id(int [link_identifier] );

  mysql_insert_id() returns the ID generated for an
  AUTO_INCREMENTED field. It will return the auto-generated
  ID returned by the last INSERT query performed using the
  given link_identifier. If link_identifier isn't specified, the last
  opened link is assumed.

As far as your other problem with forms, you might look at the wrap=
specification for the <textarea> you are using.

which
will tell you the last

Anon

Thanks for your help.

Problem 1 is solved now and I will start testing your suggestions on problem 2.
I'll post the results of my tests here.

// Åke

nasser

Hello Sridhar Bala
I need to collect data from our employees about (1000 ) I have Apache running with PHP4 & Mysql on my PC and its links for others in the LAN , I want to create a form with (Name – Address – Age ….) and each employee can submit his information and updated as he like , but each employee can edit his won record only (shouldn’t see others records )
IS the possible ?
If yes kindly guide me ..
Is there a ready to use database packages works with PHP & Mysql ?
Thanx for your help in advance

Anon

I know this question was posted a long time ago. But if anybody comes across this message(as I did), looking for an answer to something...it might be helpful to know that PHP has a function:
nl2br($var);
This function turns the /n's in your variable to <br>'s...hence returning your original linebreaks from the textarea.
So before you echo it do this:
$var = nl2br($var);
echo ("$var");