question about Buttons associated event

[hongmei]

Hi, I am new to php. I just finished tutorial class on PHP and mysql.

Here is my question:

I need to create a data entry form with several buttons (search, new, clear, edit and save buttons). Can those buttons all be submit type buttons? I put all the HTML control in a form now. I want to write a code associate with each button and want to perform different thing when user clicks the different button. For example, when user clicks New button, I want to give the value to the New button=1. Then I can check this New button value later with save button value together, I can decide whether I should update the record in the database or insert a new record to the database . What should I do? Is there any coding example similar to this task?

Thank you very much for your help!

hongmei

[suntra]

You can give a different name to each button...

<INPUT NAME="Search" VALUE="Save !" TYPE="SUBMIT">
<INPUT NAME="New" VALUE="Save !" TYPE="SUBMIT">
<INPUT NAME="Edit" VALUE="Save !" TYPE="SUBMIT">
...

To check which button has been check, you can do this :

if(isset($_REQUEST["Search"])) {
    // Here goes Search code
} else if(isset($_REQUEST["New"])) {
    // Here goes New code
} else if(isset($_REQUEST["Edit"])) {
    // Here goes Edit code
// Etc...
}

Do you understand and does it work ?

[hongmei]

Thanks for your help!

Do I have to give all the buttons the same value in order to use this code? When user clicks search button, the data fields will be all disable for editing. When user click edit button, the data fields will be enable for editing. How to code this? For example, how to disable or enable text field or check box field?

hongmei

[suntra]

No. The script will only check if the variable (the name of the pressed button) is set. You can put any value, it is not important.