validate/submit multipage form

[Anon]

hi all
i have a long form that i want to now validate/submit to a mysqldb. the form is really long, and the client wants to split it up into multiple pages for better coherency/manageability. i want to have a 'save' button on each page that saves their info, but doesn't necessarily validate their info for required fields/number of char's/etc. at the end of the form i want to have a 'submit' button that cycles through the previous 4-6 pages that make up the complete form and kicks out error messages for info that was submitted incorrectly over the past few pages. what's the best way to do this? i considered validating on every page, then having the final 'submit' button on the last page just check to see if the previous pages were submitted successfully, but if there's another way to just save info on each page without validating, then having a submit button on the last page that validates through the previous 4-6 pages that make up the complete form, it would look better. has anyone done anything like this before, any advice?

thank you!

[rrijnders]

Well, theres no such thing as a "save" button in HTML forms. You can label your SUBMIT button to say "SAVE", but it is going to POST the form data for each page to the designated ACTION script.

My suggestion: every time one of the form "pages" is posted, have the ACTION script save the form data as session variables and then present the next "page". When they post the last page, cycle through the session vars to validate. If there are errors, construct a form showing the invalid data and fields so that they can be corrected.

-- Rich