cookies, user ids, forms

Anon

Hi,

I'm having trouble trying to get more info on a particular way I would like to use cookies. Would appreciate it if anyone can help. 🙂

What I'd like to do is, when users type in a url eg. http://www.123.com/?ref=1234, when the page loads, I'd like the form on that page to automatically pre-fill the ref 1234 in one of the fields. I tried to learn about cookies but can't seem to find the info I need.

If someone can help by pointing me to some source where I can learn how I can do this, or even better, if someone can write the code for it, I'll be very grateful.

Jonathan

van__

Read up on the full cookie spec from Netscape:
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/js/client/jsref/cookies.htm

And this link has some interesting tidbits:
http://www.cookiecentral.com/content.phtml?area=2&id=1

Anon

Thanks for replying,

I've been to both of these sites and have read through them thoroughly. However, I can't make head or tails of it. Am totally new to using cookies in my forms. Most scripts I've found just print browser types and stuff and that, I can do. But still searching how to display a ref id(from url) in a form.

Still needing help.

Anon

I don't think you need a coockie to do this.

what i think you can do is ,

catch the ref number in a variable ($ref) then

This way it will allways be the correct number.

( i'm a newb myself but i think this could work)

zalath

For thatt yopu don't need cookies. Since you want it so that the variable can be set in the URL, you can just print it to the field component.

And there you go. Since the URL contains the ref=1234 -part, PHP will define a variable $ref containing the value 1234, which the <?=$ref?> will print.

Anon

Thanks Lauri and Bart,

Woohoo! I used Lauri's method and it worked!

Now.. the reason why I enquired about cookies is that what if I wanted the referrer to receive credit if the visitor he/she sent to the page returned later? Or that the visitor arrived at the homepage eg.
http://www.mydomain.com/?ref=1234 and I want to credit the referral on the form at http://www.mydomain.com/signup/. I would require the use of cookies then, yes?

Thanks in advance!
Jonathan