newbie form problem.

[Anon]

Hello, I am just trying to make sure that my variables arent empty when my form is submitted, but so far this will always say "please fill in the text field". What i have is two fields (one dropdown and one textfield) the dropdown is populated from the database so the user can select an exisiting category (named "categoryexist"), the textfield allows for a new category to be created (named "category") so.....what am I missing here? is this the wrong way to go about this?

if(isset($submit)){

if (($category == "") && ($categoryexist == "")){
echo "Please fill in the category Field";
exit; }
elseif (($categoryexist != "") && ($categoryexist != "Select Category")){
$category = $categoryexist;
}

[khaine]

Try using empty instead of isset. isset will return true if the variable exists regardless of whats in it. empty will check it exists and is populated.

Mark.

[Anon]

thanks, i was just reading about "empty" and have read mixed reports, I am really just after the solution to why it is always telling me that the variable is empty, even though it is not....and i guess that it is because there is no allowance for :

..if the textfield has a value and the dropdown does not then continue...

The whole problem stems from having two inputs for the one variable, the form works fine with just one of the fields there and has worked fine with both, but as soon as I put in the checking for empty variables it is not working....

[Anon]

Unless you have a blank entry in your dropdown, your "if" statement will always return "false" since there will always be something selected. I assume from your code that the first element of the drop down is "Select Category" so $categoryexist will never == "".

If that is the case then I would do:

<?
if (!$category && $categoryexist == 'Select Category') {
echo 'Please choose a category';
}
if ($category && $categoryexist != 'Select Category') {
echo 'You appear to have chosen two categories';
}
if ($category && $categoryexist == 'Select Category') {
$category = $category;
}
if (!$category && $categoryexist != 'Select Category') {
$category = $categoryexist;
}
?>

[Anon]

nice, thanks for that....I was on the way there and my code does look a little different to yours but does the same thing hopefully, the only thing that i had overseen was the fact the dropdown would never be empty so theres no point in saying == ""...thanks heaps for your help