Forms and Error Checking

gte806e

Ok I have a form that checks to make sure certain fields are filled out on the following page and if the fields are not filled out then it redirects you back to the form. But the problem is that when you are redirected back all the fileds are now blank. Is there a way to restore the varibles into the form?

Also is there a better way to do this? Should I use a javascript Validation? If I do how would I set it up so if say for instance. The user clicked submit. It wouldn't send the action until after the javascript validate has been done other wise do nothing?

Thanks,

Jesse

PHP-Editors_com

your first question: use hidden form fields.
second question: if you like, but you still need to do PHP validation for non-javascript browsers.

fabius

Off the top of my head...

Have the form submit to the same page, rather than the next page.
Put a hidden form field in with a name of "submitted" and value of "1" (or something).
On the page, before outputting any HTML, check to see if $submitted==1. If so, validate the values from the form. If they're all OK then do a Header redirect to the next page (is it Header, or Location? I forget).
If the values don't validate, display the form again with any appropriate error messages.

You could store the error messages in an array while validating, with keys the same as the names of your form elements and values of the messages themselves. You can check whether the form has validated by checking the size of your errors array (the size is 0 if there are no errors). Then in the form you can check for the presence of an error for each form element and print the error message in the appropriate place.

I hope that helps...