Form fields blank on going back to page

AlanW

I have a form that is validated on submission. When the validation page comes up with an error, and the user goes back to the form, with most modern browsers the fields on the form are blank.

Some of the validation has to be done against a database, so there is no chance of doing it in javaScript on the page itself. And I realise that his is not a problem with some browsers, but I can't dictate what browsers people will be using.

Has anyone got any ideas how I can work round this problem.

flameche

Experience thaught me to never trust browsers for what you do on the web.

the best way would be to code your form using php and trap the values as they are passed to the script.

$value = 'defaultValue';
global $fieldName;
if( isset( $fieldName ) ) {
$value = $fieldName;
}
echo '<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="' . $fieldName . '" VALUE="' . $value . '">';

lorax

Are you using session variables? If so then all you need to do is to display the variables in their appropriate place when the user returns to that form.

PHPdev

If you are going to validate on a seperate page from your HTML form, then you have to use sesion variables to pass the data back to the form when there is an error.

Something else to consider is, validating the form on the same page as the form... simple example...

<?php
if (isset($_POST["field"])) {

  $error = false // error flag

  // check for erros here set flag = true if there is an error

  if (!$error) {
    // do whatever if there are no errors
  }
}
?>

<!-- HTML Page -->
<html>
<body>
<form method="post" action="post_to_self.php">
    <input type="text" name="field" value="<?php $_POST["field"] ?>">
     <input type="submit" vlaue="submit form">
</form></body></html>

You can also do an if statment to check that a particular form element isset in $_POST[] before outputing that data in to the form. You can output the errors anywhere on the page all you have to do is check that the $error = true and then output said error.

There are many different ways to skin a cat, but this eliminates having to to back if there is an error