Frames and PHP

fnbcprog

I am trying to program a web application that searches the name of an individual, list the results, and from those results select one to edit. I have no problem completing these tasks.

There is a catch.

I have programmed this application into frames (main and navigation). Initially the navigation has a new search button on it, accompanied by a commissions and notes button. When the user selects the record they want to modify I need to pass an id ($id) to the navigation panel.

This has created a huge problem because it is like trying to perform a double target. I cant submit the form to move to the next stage while passing a variable to the other frame.

If you have any confusions trying to understand this questionemail me at: harrisbp@vcu.edu; otherwise, I hope that you have some suggestions for me.

irish

I once made a management console with frames and PHP, and had a few headaches when dealing with passing vars between pages. I sent you an email for more clarification, but it may help others to discuss it here.

I need to know either a little bit more about how you are doing things, or I can just explain what happened to me, and what I did to fix it, though it will most likely be a very long post 😃

fnbcprog

I begin by specifying the switch function and variable. I am using this to transfer between the first two screens and then I open a different file for the view and update screen.

Here is the code for the first part:

switch($screen) {

// Show the form to search for a client

case "find":

From here I build the HTML code to produce the search form. This form is very easy. It involves a simple text field and a submit button.

After submiting the value of the text field ($searchname) I switch to a "select" screen. This value is used to search the MySQL database for matches. The results are then displayed in a table.

During this whole process we are located in the "main" frame.

The user then selects the name of the individual that they want to view the information for. This is where I lose the functioning of my application. When the "View Client Information" button is clicked to continue into the "view" screen I cannot tell the script to submit the information to the "main" frame and pass a variable to the "navigation" frame to display the other buttons (orginally hidden for the first two screens).

If we can figure out how to send this information I would be alright I beleive.

irish

Ok, I think I see what you are trying to accomplish. I am assuming that when the list of users comes up, being clickable, that you are passing GET vars (or trying to) to both the main contant frame and the navigation frame? If that is the case, you actually will need to send info to the main frame page, capture it there, and then forward that data into the individual frames.

Make sense? It may require some reworking of the page logic...

Anyway, as an example, the user link that takes you to the view page may be formatted like so:

<a href="frame.php?uid=1&action=view" target="_top">Joe User</a>

What happens here is that the link will target the frame page, with the data that your application needs to proceed to the view page. Here is more or less exactly how my application acheives this:

<?php

if ($_GET)
{
	$i = 0;
	foreach($_GET as $key => $var)
	{
		if ($i == 0)
		{
			$link = "?".$key."=".$var;
			$i++;
		}
		else
		{
			$link .= "&".$key."=".$var;
		}
	}
}

?>
<html lang="en">

<head>
	<title>My Page</title>
</head>

<frameset rows="23,*" border="0" framespacing="0">
	<frame src="status.php<?php print $link; ?>" name="userFrame">
	<frameset cols="170,*" border="0" framespacing="0">
		<frame src="navigation.php<?php print $link; ?>" name="menuFrame">
		<frame src="content.php<?php print $link; ?>" name="bodyFrame">
	</frameset>
</frameset>
</html>

As you can see, if I call the frame page with GET vars, those vars are then passed to all the other pages that make up the frame.

What I think you will need to do to make this work however is to make those individual frame pages aware that certain data will be loaded through the frames, and act accordingly.

What I mean is, if you have (and you most likely do) many different pages that get loaded into the content area, the actual fram contruction page will have to know which one to call, or the individual frame page will have to know that when certain variables are passed in via GET requests, that they need to take alternate actions.

I fear I my rambling is not making sense, so I am going to step here and let you digest what I have posted thus far. If this makes no sense at all, or if you have other questions about what I am trying to explain, let me know!

leatherback

Hi,

Have you considered using client side scripting, (using javascript) for your link?

Something along the lines of:

What this does:

onclicks; Tells the browser what to do when the buttno is clicked

parent.frames[0].location tells the browser to change the page in the first frame in your frame defenitions to the location which follows. You can parse all sorts of variables or perhaps even some session details through this link

Sorry to get you confused between options. Remember however that some client do not accept javascipting, and I am not sure how/if that affects the script here..

irish

Yes, there is also Javascript 🙂 I avoid that when I can just because I can never justify the time spent troubleshooting for various browsers, and in the case I described above, I realized the problem very early on and was able to build the app with the frames issue in mind.

So anyway, in response to this question:

I understand what this is trying to do, but when the target is set to "_top" does that refresh all of the windows?

Also, can you explain the different parts of the initial if condition and how it knows the different parts of the URL.

Yes, the target will make all the frames refresh. For me this was not an issue as my status bar was basically just text. If one of your frames is image heavy or complex in another way, it may make page reloads slow.

And again, you have to make each default frame page (in the example above they would be status.php, navigation.php, and content.php) aware that they will be getting called on when you have to reload the frames (using the method I described), so they can act accordingly.

What I mean by that is when the frameset is first loaded, you have the main frameset page, perhaps index.php, and then you have the first three pages to get loaded, status.php, navigation.php, and content.php. If your site is how I think it is, the page that lists the users is not going to be the first page from the content frame. Maybe it will be called users.php or something. In my scenario, content.php needs to know that it may be receiving a GET request that originated not from itself, but from another page, and then either forward the data onto that page, or handle it in some appropriate manner.

Just to make it entirely clear how it worked in my case: I actually had the whole site navigation setup as an SQL db. So the whole site actually consisted of index.php (the frameset), status.php (the top frame), nav.php (the navigation bar), and content.php (the main content page). Then I set up a simple database with parent/child relationships between different "pages" on the site, to form a hierarchy, like so:

itemNum <-- inique ID for each "page"
parent <-- itemNum of the item that is this items parent, 0 is top level
title <-- display name for this item
link <-- the actual page if this is indeed a page (more on that)

Here is a sample set of data from that db:

(itemNum){parent} title - link
(1){0} User Management - menu://
(2){0} Site Management - menu://
(3){0} File Management - menu://
(4){1} Add User - ./inc/addUser.php
(5){1} Edit User - ./inc/editUser.php
(6){2} New Page - ./inc/newPage.php
(7){2} New Dir - ./inc/newDir.php
(8){2} Edit Page - ./inc/editPage.php
(9){3} Delete File - ./inc/delFile.php

Now, when the application was initiated (when a user logs in), the system forms a heirarchal list of all the whole site. An example using the above would look like this:

User Management
-> Add User
-> Edit User
Site Management
-> New Page
-> New Dir
-> Edit Page
File Management
-> Delete File

Do you see the pattern? The parent/child relationship in the db allows for fairly complex nesting. This also allows me to make a "bread crumb" navigation aid with amazing ease, as well as provide a fully web based management system for access, structure, etc. Think of which individual page like addUser.php and delFile.php as a simple system tool, there for basically one function. The database structuring then allows you to tie all these tools together with a consistent and easy to change interface.

Now, there are two other db tables, users and security, that are used to check that someone accessing any of the pages is logged in and allowed to access whatever page it is they are loading, you'll see why in a second.

You will notice that the links for the various pages are sometimes menu:// or sometimes ./inc/sompage.php. When the application first puts the structure together, it looks at the link to determine if that item is actually just a link to another group of options or an actual option with a function. So, my site really does have a ton of pages, but I have content.php setup to look for certain variables that are in each query string, that tells content.php that this page id was called. That page can then look at the corresponding link in the db. If it sees menu://, it pulls all the child elements and presents them as further links deeper into the site. If it sees the location of a valid file, it will display that file instead.

I actually made the site so that there are only two instances where all the framed needed to be reloaded, once when the user logged in, and once when they logged out. The status bar would change to reflect that they were logged in, and provide a logout link, and also showed what user group they were in. The navigation bar would show only the menu choices that they had access to, and did not need to change while they used the application (which is where yours differs the most I think).

So, that was rather long winded, but I guess I felt like I just wasn't explaining it right without telling how I used it. Now, in your case, you are posting to a page that then shows a list of links. These links need to update content in two frames. So, you need to call on the frame page, using its url and target="_top" (or alternately use the JavaScript method) so that it can then pass the data to both the content and nav frames. Whatever nav page that your frameset calls needs to know that it may be receiving GET vars that will cause it to alter its normal behavior.

What you see happening in my frameset example above is first the script looks for the presence of $GET variables { if ($GET) }. If it finds these, it will first set a little counter variable ($i) to 0, and then proceed to loop through all of the $GET vars. On the very first one ($i == 0), it starts the string its builds with a ? followed by the name of the variable = value of the variable. It then increments the counter by one ($i++), On every successive loop ($i != 0) it just concatenates an & and the name of the variable = the value of the variable. The script knows what the $GET vars are because when you call that frameset page using target="_top" you are using a url that says something like:

where those vars and vals are all the data you need to pass to both the nav and content pages.

Then, as it starts the HTML output, it tacks on "?var1=val1&var2=val2..." to the end of the urls on the frame pages. This allows this data to pass to those pages. Now, in your case, where I suspect that just reloading the main frame page will cause the wrong page to be loaded in the content frame, you may need to add some logic to the framepage itself that watches for particular variables, and dynamically loads the appropriate frame pages in their respective frames.

phew That was a lot of writing. Again, if I am not clear, please do not hesitate ask. Hope this helps 🙂