getting Variables from HTML list

Anon

I have a question as of now I have a HTML login where it looks like this

Username
<INPUT NAME="U_Name" Size="10">
</form>

I can get the information back if I "username=$U_Name" on the search.html page put I can not pass the variable to anyother page. For example I need the variable to valid the username, password, and database. but I can only pass the variables to the html that is in the action. please if anyone can please help me it will be very notied.

Scotty

Anon

So you want to have the user:
1- input information into a form.
2- validate that information.
3- use that information on a 3rd page.

Well you could set a cookie after step 2 and read the cookie in step 3.

Or you could use session variables.

Or you could pass all information in a get string.

Or you could make all of you're subsiquent links buttons inside forms holding the variables in hidden fields.

Anon

ok can you explain the session variables and the string setups, I do not want to use cookies because that is a huge security risk

Scotty

Anon

Personally I've never used the session variables in PHP, from what I've read they set a cookie in the users browser that holds a unique ID that corespondes to a row in a database that holds all of the registered variables, and reads those variables into the global scope at the start of every session. But like I said I've not used this method so I'd suggest that you read the manual about it.

Using a get string is easy. Just look at the URL in your browser currently. Notice the <b>?</b> that is the start of a get query string. It tells the server that everything after it is a name=value pair, and php will take those pairs and put them into variables. Each pair has to be separated by an <b>&</b>. So if you had to pass a first and last name you'd add something like this to the end of your url:
?first=John&last=Smith
And in the PHP page that you called you'd find 2 variables named $first and $last holding the values specified.