php in 1 page?? or separate??

Hoangsta

if you were to have a form that needed to be submitted, would you prefer to keep it as a php page and have its action="self" or would you direct it to another page, say action="registration.php"

Pros and Cons??? I have a page in html but my action is to a php page.

laserlight

On the same file means a bigger file, but on a different file means more files.

Generally I would look at whether it makes sense to put it on the same page (e.g. not all that much processing, and the user feedback would be like the page the form is in).

Hoangsta

one of my page ask for your first name, last name, desired username, and email address...

My main problem is that when a user leaves an empty field and submits the form, it doesn't sow the form again...I thought that maybe one page of code would bring back the form...

laserlight

Well, in that case it makes sense to use the same page.

Simply fill in the values of the fields if the variables are set.
e.g.

<input type="text name="fieldname" value="<?php
if (isset($_POST['fieldname']))
    echo htmlspecialchars(stripslashes($_POST['fieldname']));
?>">

Hoangsta

If I place my php codes before my html, my form doesn't appear, but if i place the php codes after the html, it appear...

what's up with that...i'm modifying my code to match yours right now...

laserlight

I think this forum has some problem with the parser such that I have an extra newline in my example.

Anyway, what do you mean by "If I place my php codes before my html, my form doesn't appear"?

All the code needs to do is check that the form is being submitted, and process it if it has.
To check that, one can check that some variable, such has the one coming from the submit button, has been set.

Whether or not the form has been submitted, code like as my example will handle the form remaining filled out.

Hoangsta

i coded the way you wanted me to and it doens't work...i think i'll wait til tomorrow when my php is upgraded to the latest version.

laserlight

what is the error message?

spudmurf2k

dunno if u still need d help, but if you're using a one page form use this:
<?php
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'GET') {

// Form Here

}
elseif ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {

// Form Processing Code Here

}
else {
die('Script can only work with GET or POST requests.');
}
?>

This is in the cuckoo book by the way.

Hoangsta

what the hell is a cuckoo book by the way?

paul088

Read my post at

http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=10237430

One page is preferred.

matt_4013

spudmurf2k, what is the use of checking the request method like that?

spudmurf2k

D post n get script works cos wen a browser requests a page, it does so with a HTTP GET request, but when it is sending information it uses the HTTP POST request (the 'method="post" ') attribute in the html form tag.

Therefore when a user looks for the page from a link or by typing in the address they get the form, because a GET request was used, but when the script receives a POST request, ie when the form is submitted, it then processes the information that is POSTed to it.

And the cuckoo book is the o'reilly programming php book, it's a cuckoo on the front.

OK?

drawmack

Since I use OO programming I almost never have on page submit to another page. All my processing is done in my class files, my front end files are usually only about 25 - 50 lines longer then the straight html would be.

spudmurf2k

What's OO Programming?

paul088

Object-Oriented

Hoangsta

I believe OO means, Object Oriented....it's like Visual Basic.net

drawmack

object oriented

Sxooter

The real answer is, of course, what makes for a better user experience?

The user might want to bookmark a page. If you do everything on one page with Postvars the user cannot bookmark them. This may be a good thing, or a bad thing.

It's a bad thing to let users bookmark a page that is an editing page. I.e. they edit a file, save the bookmark, come back three months later via the bookmark, and the data stored by the page reverts to the older data from the bookmark.

On the other hand, maybe they want to save a page of the company phonebook with their department number as the filter.

Search filter screens are the ones that often should be bookmarkable (i.e. use get method) while edit pages often should not be and use post.

If you're doing editing stuff, it often provides a smoother user experience to have everything in one page with no get url tacked on the end, so that if they do bookmark it and come back, it will just take them to the first mode you've programmed in.

But for search filters, it's often better from the user perspective if the company phonebook lives in distinct html files like exec.html, fax.html, conf.html etc...

Keep in mind you can still use all the same classes, objects, functions or whatnot using include files.

So the answer, like it so often is, is that it depends. :-)