Pass form variable to script

loriv

Ok, I've borrowed a nifty book and I've had soooo much trouble so far. Took a long time to get past the 'hello world' program -- apparently I can't use single quotes and '\n' -- I have to use double quotes in order to use '\n'.

Anyway, I'm now on the second example. Basically, there are 2 scripts. The first one takes user input and saves it as a variable to pass into another script. See the following...

Someone please help. I'm sooo frustrated! I'm thinking I have something setup wrong somewhere or maybe I have a bad book -- yeah that's it. I have a bad book.

Script 1:

<html>
<head>
<title>Who Are You?</title>
</head>
<body>
<form action="you_are.php">
Please enter your name:<br>
I am...
<?php
print('<input type="text" name="person" value="' . $person . '"size="15">');
?>
<input type="submit" value="Go!" size="15">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Script 2:

<html>
<head>
<title>You Are! ...</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
print('Well, hello ' . $person . ', nice to meet you!');
print('<br>');
print('<a href="who_are_you.php?person=' . urlencode($person) . '">Back to Who Are You?</a>');
?>
</body>
</html>

I've tried to use $_POST['person'] and that didn't work either...

Thanks!

Lori

theeper

That seems to work ok for me, try using $HTTP_POST_VARS["person"] instead of $POST["person"]. I think maybe you are using a PHP version before $POST came in that has register_globals=off

loriv

UGH! That doesn't work either! Why? Could it be my setup???

Lori

theeper

Doh!, I missed this earlier, but you need to put the form submission method ... ie,

form action="you_are.php">

should be ...

form action="you_are.php" method="post">

Try that.

BuzzLY

GET is the default form method...

When the second page comes up, do you see a part of the URL that looks like this:

?person=Lori

If you do, then you are using the GET method instead of POST. GET passes the variables from your page to the next page through the URL. POST sends them through headers, and is basically invisible to the user. For a simple form like yours, that has one variable, GET is sufficient. But, if you create a complex application that requests lots of data, you can see how the URL would get incredibly long. That's where POST comes in -- it doesn't matter how much data needs to be passed.

[edit]
Doh! Looks like theeper answered you on this... If you want more information about how GET and POST work, webmonkey has a good tutorial on forms, with some info on Get vs. Post. Click here to view it.

Good Luck!

loriv

Thanks! The POST worked.

Any ideas on why the GET wouldn't?

Lori

BuzzLY

Did you originally try to use $GET['person']? It didn't work with $person because you most likely have register_globals set to OFF in your php.ini file (and that's a good thing). Therefore, since your form method was set to GET by default, you needed to use $GET['person'] to retrieve the value.

loriv

OH THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Will I be encountering this type of thing often b/c I have the REGISTER_GLOBALS set to off?

Thanks!

Lori

BuzzLY

Yes, you will. But that is good -- you should never rely on register_globals being set to ON in your code. $POST and $GET will always work, regardless of the register_globals setting.

I recommend you use the post method most of the time. The only time you don't need to is if you specifically want the information to be in the URL. One example would be that you want people to be able to bookmark that particular page. Other than that, use POST: