tricky problem - urgently need help!

[steveryan]

hi there,

i'd really appreciate some help on this.

i have to write the contents of a form to a tab delimited text file.

the problem is -

this form has lots of checkboxes. if a checkbox is not selected simply no data referring to that checkbox is passed with the form.

so for example, if the third checkbox and the fifth checkbox are selected, they return their values to the script.

how can i possibly then put in tabs for the fourth checkbox to keep everything aligned nicely with the headings in the tab delimited file?

i urgently need help. thank you.

[kevinsequeira]

post the code you're using to get the values.

reg
kevin

[steveryan]

i'm actually writing this in perl. i hope some of you will understand this. thanks.

the following lines are simply reading in the form values

read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
@pairs = split(/&/,$buffer);
foreach $pair (@pairs) {
($name, $value) = split(/=/,$pair);
$FORM{$name} = $value;
}

so if a checkbox is left blank, it just simply isn't passed to the script.

...

[naomi385]

This may not be exactly what you want, but if you allow the user to select from a pair of radio buttons ('on' and 'off'), you will always get a request variable. As you have realized, the nature of checkboxes in HTML forms is only to create a variable if they are checked, and not otherwise. However, with code like this:

<input id="coffee" type="radio" name="drink" value="Coffee"> Coffee<br />
<input id="tea" type="radio" name="drink" value="Tea" checked="checked"> Tea<br />
<hr>
<input id="regular" type="radio" name="drug" value="Regular"> Regular<br />
<input id="decaf" type="radio" name="drug" value="Decaf" checked="checked"> Decaf<br />

you will always get a usable value.