get value of ONLY the submitted item

[juschillinnow]

I have a string that is defined early in the script. For example....

$name = juschillinnow;

Later on in the script I have a form where you can specify your name.

My problem is that I need to check to see if the form was left blank or not.

I use: if(!$name){ something}

Is there a way to check if the submitted form was left blank?? Otherwise $name will never be blank because I tell the script what the default value is earlier. But I really need to check to see if the form was blank.

I tried using javascript like: if(!document.form.value = ''){alert('something');}

But I really don't like using that and it continues to run the script as client side.

Any suggestions on how to solve this problem.....Does PHP have a built in function to validate forms?

[Duey]

well could rename the input fieild for a start or you could do something like this:

<?
if (!isset($_POST['name'])){
//form is blank

}
?>

[juschillinnow]

I guess I'm going to have to say nevermind on this one. Thanks for the suggestion, but that's basically the same thing I was doing. I just had this thing setup kinda weird (well fine for what I wanted) and then we had to add some functionality to it and it's not doing what I want. I guess I'll just have to do some RE-coding (I hate that word )

[sabbagh]

What you want to do:

keep the value of the field if it is not blank and change it otherwise?

try:

if($name==""){$name=someone; }
?>
<form .......>
<input type="text" value="<?=$name?>">

or try to explain your problem better.