Pre-fill a text box with a $variable

Anon

I want to do a fairly simple thing take pre-existing contact data and pre-fill some text boxes with that info.

I have seen and done this with drop-down lists, but I cannot get it to work with a text box or a text area.

Is this possible or is there a better way?
What I want is a connection to a database that is read in and if need be edited to update current contact info.

Example (albeit a poor one because it doesn't work):

<?PHP
$dbName = "MyName";

echo "<textarea name="varG" wrap="hard" cols="15" rows="1">$dbName</textarea>";
?>

techek

The first thing that springs to mind is the wrong use of quotes. Try this for a change :

<?PHP
$dbName = 'MyName';

echo "<textarea name='varG' wrap='hard' cols='15' rows='3'>$dbName</textarea>";
?>

Second, you must remember that the contents of that textarea-element is returned in 'varG' and NOT 'dbName'.

If you want a more specific example, call me! s

Anon

You need to escape double quotes. Try the following
<?php
$dbName = "MyName";

echo "<textarea name=\"varG\" wrap=\"hard\" cols=\"15\" rows=\"1\">$dbName</textarea>";
?>

jlpierce

How about, he doesn't need all of those double quotes anyway.

echo "<textarea name=varG wrap=hard cols=15
rows=1>$dbName</textarea>";

If he uses this form, the variable will be expanded and he does not need to litter his page with all of the escapes.

He could also try here docs, ie:

$this_text_area = <<<TTA
<textarea name=varG wrap=hard cols=15 rows=1>$dbName</textarea>"
TTA;

TTA is the name of the here doc and is only used to identify it during creation.

echo $this_text_area;

Anon

Thank You for the advice, They all will work fine, however, the one that sends it to a variable is pretty helpful... I do not understand the use of the "TTA" - but i will research this further.

Thanks for all the helpful replies!
Butros

jlpierce

Hello,

The TTA is nothing more than a delimiter, and identifier to start and stop the HERE DOCUMENT string. You can use any characters to start and stop with. I use EOQ everywhere and while reading source when I encounter EOQ I know that it is a here document.

I use them frequently to output form and table elements, they really are handy for this function. You can place variables inside of double quotes within the heredoc and then make the here doc a function that simply return the heredoc. When you call the function you pass the variables to the function and they will be return expanded.

Good luck.