extreme newbie, I cant get this to work

8ride

Alright I got a book on PHP yesterday, i am trying an incredibly easy script but having problems getting it to work. Please try it, none of the variables transfer from the html file to the php file. Please tell me what is wrong, I hate to be so frustrated at the begining of this book.
Check it out here

here is the code for the html

<html>
<head>
<title>Html Form</title>
</head>
<body>
Fill this out for testing purposes. TOBART

<FORM ACTION="HandleForm.php" METHOD=POST>
First Name <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="FirstName" size=20><br>

Last Name <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="LastName" size=40><br>

Email Address <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="Email" size=60><br>

Comments <TEXTAREA NAME="Comments" ROWS=5 COLS=40></textarea><br>

</FORM>
</body>
</html>

and here is the php file HandleForm.php

<html>
<head>
<title>Form Results</title>
<body>
<?php
/ this page receives and handles the data generated by "form.html". /
print "Your First Name is $FirstName<br>\n";
print "Your Last Name is $LastName<br>\n";
print "Your email address is $Email<br>\n";
print "This is what you had to say:<br> $Comments<br>\n";
?>
</body>
</html>

cgraz

Change your PHP code to:

<html> 
<head> 
<title>Form Results</title> 
<body> 
<?php 
/* this page receives and handles the data generated by "form.html". */ 
print "Your First Name is " . $_POST['FirstName'] . "<br>\n"; 
print "Your Last Name is " . $_POST['LastName'] . "<br>\n"; 
print "Your email address is " . $_POST['Email'] . "<br>\n"; 
print "This is what you had to say:<br> " . $_POST['Comments'] . "<br>\n"; 
?> 
</body> 
</html>

Cgraz

8ride

sorry, still no luck. check the link again (I reuploaded) and it does the exact same thing.

OK what the heck is wrong here, I cannot get a single variable to work?!?!?!? Even the simplest of scripts, the variables do not work. Is this a problem with my server?

http://www.chumpchange.org/testing/hello.php?firstname=Jeff

<html>
<head>
<title>Using Variables</title>
</head>

<body>
<?php
/ this page may have numerous lines of code containing the following print statements. /
print "<h2><center><b>Hello, $firstname.</b></center></h2><br>\n";

/ this page may have more code after the print statement we are focusing on /
?>

</body>
</html>

8ride

OK I am going insane here, can someone please give me a very simple php file to upload to my server? One that does something similar to what I am trying. The message forum I have on my site is done with php and I zero problems with it. Why cant I get this simple stuff to work??

cgraz

i'd say it was your php version. What version are you running? You can create a new script with the code

<?

phpinfo();

?>

Save it as info.php, then upload to your server. Type www.yourdomain.com/info.php to view the contents. It'll tell you what version of PHP you're running. Give this code a whirl

<html> 
<head> 
<title>Form Results</title> 
<body> 
<?php 
/* this page receives and handles the data generated by "form.html". */ 
print "Your First Name is " . $HTTP_POST_VARS['FirstName'] . "<br>\n"; 
print "Your Last Name is " . $HTTP_POST_VARS['LastName'] . "<br>\n"; 
print "Your email address is " . $HTTP_POST_VARS['Email'] . "<br>\n"; 
print "This is what you had to say:<br> " . $HTTP_POST_VARS['Comments'] . "<br>\n"; 
?> 
</body> 
</html>

Oh, and for the new link you created that's supposed to say hello Jeff, you gotta use either $GET['var_name'] or $HTTP_GET_VARS['var_name'] (i'm guessing HTTP_GET_VARS since $POST didn't work)

<?

print "<h2><center><b>Hello, " . $HTTP_GET_VARS['firstname'] . ".</b></center></h2><br>\n"; 
echo "using _get " . $_GET['firstname'] . "<br>\n";

?>

Cgraz

8ride

ok that new coding worked (with some extra code also displaying in the html output).

Why doesn't any of the code in the book I bought work? You'd think it would. What I was doing before was code directly from the tutorials in the book.

cgraz

It doesn't work because Register Globals is off. You can read more about it at php.net and look at the predefined variables here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.php

Basically, if you want any variables passed through a form using a method of POST, $var won't give you the value, you must use $HTTP_POST_VARS['var']

To pull a variable out of the url, you must use $HTTP_GET_VARS['var'] because that is the GET method. There are more predefined variables you can look at at that link I provided.

The book's code isn't incorrect, it's merely for a php setup that has register globals on.

Cgraz

8ride

ok, thanks I think I understand what you are saying. Is it like calling in an image like forum/images/hello.jpg instead of putting hello.jpg ? In the sense that you have to tell it where to look for the variable.

Also is there anyways that I can set up my server so that all the code out of the book will work? It would make my life a lot easier.

cgraz

ah, i wasn't aware this was your server. Yeah, just set register globals to on.

Cgraz

8ride

Well its not my server. I dont own the server, I just purchased space from a company (a very bad company which refuses to turn php off of safe mode). I will see if they allow me to register globals on, but I doubt it.

sanu

it might works

<html>
<head>
<title>Form Results</title>
<body>
<?php
/ this page receives and handles the data generated by "form.html". /
print ("Your First Name is $FirstName <br>");
print ("Your Last Name is $LastName <br>");
print ("Your email address is $Email <br>");
print ("This is what you had to say: <br> $Comments<br>");
?>
</body>
</html>