HTML POST Errors

vbmurray

I am having a problem. I just installed PHP on Apache (Windows 2000 Server) and I cannot retrieve form variables.

I have run scripts so far successfully, but I cannot get a form to work. When you submit the form, it only "refreshes" the page. It does not post the values.

I have tried to find the problem, but I can't.

<form name="form2" method="post" action="<?php echo $PHP_SELF ?>">
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Welcome
<?php print $f_name;?>... </strong></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong><u>Member
Login</u>:</strong> </font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img src="img/blank.gif" width="1" height="5"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="19%"><div align="right"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Member
Name:</font></div></td>
<td width="1%"> </td>
<td width="80%"><input name="username" type="text" id="username"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">P</font><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">assword:</font></div></td>
<td> </td>
<td><input name="password" type="password" id="password"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><img src="img/blank.gif" width="1" height="5"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
<td><INPUT name=Login type=image id="Login" VALUE="search" src="img/button_login.gif" height="20"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
<td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="15%"><a href="member_signup.php"><img src="img/button_signup.gif" width="60" height="20" border="0"></a></td>
<td width="85%"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not
a member?</font></td>
</tr>
</table></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</table></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

Sorry for the mess, but I have it in some messy tables, but that is the entire form code. For example, the php works fine for the $f_name variable, it just displays the default first name.

I can't even print the values that were entered and submitted....it doesnt submit.

I don't think it is a code thing, b/c I have used this code on another server and it works fine.

Any help would be appreciated....

thanks in advance

Van

diego25

I think it has to do with the action of your form. In the new server, $PHP_SELF doesn't exist so your form action is null (view the source code of the outputted HTML to check). To correct the problem, try $SERVER['PHP_SELF'] or $SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']

Diego

Weedpacket

...and your variables will be in $_POST['fieldname'].

vbmurray

I tried that and it still does not work. Even if I try to pass it to another page, it still does not work ex: action="processor.php"; I still cannot retrieve any variables.

Any suggestions?

Damien_Buttler

Try putting extract($_REQUEST); at the top of your php code in the page that requires the values. I found that if I don't have this that the submitted values don't work either.

Damien.

vbmurray

THANK YOU!

That worked perfectly!

Does anyone know why that is? Is there some configuration I did not do when I installed PHP?

Hmm....

Anyway...the extract(.... worked!

Thanks...

vbmurray

Ooops...the extract(... command fixed my errors for retrieving the variables, but when I put action=<?php echo $PHP_SELF?>, the form does not show up. When I view the source all I see is:

Here is my test code I am using.

<body>
<?php
$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
?>
<form action="<?php echo $PHP_SELF?>" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" name="form1">
<table width="750" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td>name:
<input name="name" type="text" id="name"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>password:
<input name="password" type="password" id="password"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

<?php
echo $name $password;
?>

</body>

Weedpacket

Originally posted by vbmurray
<?php
$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
?>
<form action="<?php echo $PHP_SELF?>" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" name="form1">

Err, what diego25 meant was;

<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>" method="post" name="form1">

...and what I meant was that you'd use $_POST['username'] instead of $username. (I have no idea where that enctype= attribute came from.)

You can go "extract($REQUEST)" if you want, but in doing so you throw away all the safety precautions and performance benefits that using the $POST[] array directly would have given you. All this (how to get data from forms) is described in the manual, under Variables From Outside PHP.

vbmurray

I tried it again and still when I try to access the page, the form does not show up.... I get <body></body> when I view the source. As soon as I take out any of the PHP_SELF code, the form will show up, but I cannot put in the PHP_SELF action, I have to send the values to another page ex: processor.php (which does work). I am stumped. I am thinking it is in my PHP configuration. I looked at my php_info.php and it shows PHP_SELF as the the location of the file (which seems right), maybe if someone looked at that, they could see something wrong www.vanmurray.com/test/php_info.php Even if I try to echo $PHP_SELF, it will be a blank screen, like I dont have errors turned on or something, I have never gotten an error message, even with invalid PHP code. Here is the test code I tried.

<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

<body>
<form name="form1" method="post" action="<?php echo $SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>">
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td>name:
<input name="POST['name']" type="text" id="POST['name']"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>password:
<input name="POST['password']" type="password" id="_POST['password']"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

<?php
echo $name<br>;
echo $password;
?>
</body>
</html>

jesus_hairdo

This might not solve your problem, but, I have noticed that your names for the form elements are wrong, you don't name the form elements 'post['element_name'], you call it 'element_name' and just refer to it in PHP code as $POST['element_name]'.

For example you would use

<input type="text" name="name" value="John Smith">
.....

Then in your form processing script you would access the value 'John Smith' by using the variable $POST[name], eg.

<?
print "The form submittors name was $_POST[name]";
?>

This would have the output of :

The form submittors name was John Smith

BTW you might want to consider changing

<? echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>

to:

<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>

its merely a cosmetic change but i think it makes the code look a little tidier.

Jamie