Design Question

ethought

This is kind of a strange question. When you have a Form page and all it really does is submit to someaction.php, what is the appropriate naming scheme that should be used. For example, I have a form that is AddReference.php. I am keeping with the PHP extension throughout just for the sake of simplicity. I know that I could have AddReference.html and AddReference.php for the action. But since mine are all PHP exts, what is the best naming method?

I have been using things like do_AddReference.php to imply do and action. Is this normal? Is this stupid? Thanks for any help.

Gregg

eoghain

Personally I typically make my forms self contained. So that if someone comes to one of my form pages through a link then the form is displayed. If they then submit that form, it is submitted to itself and the processing code takes over and does whatever I need done with the form and deposits the user at whatever page I need them to be at when the form processing is done. This method works well since if I have to change my form I can change the processing in the same file without having to remember to open the new file and fix more code.

ethought

Thanks for the reply. That sounds like a good idea. I have a couple of questions regarding this.

Is this a widely used method?
How do you know whether or not the page is being displayed for form purposes or for processing purposes?

Thanks.

Gregg

paulnaj

I use the same method as eoghain. It's a matter of taste!

You can check variables passed to the page, and act based on their values ...

1) If they are empty ... show the form
2) If they are invalid ... show the form, maybe with an explanation
3) If they are valid ... process the variables and send the user to the 'next' page.

This can all happen in one switch statement or if...else if... else

dalecosp

I'd say that the approach eoghain/paulnaj describe is pretty common, as long as the project isn't a large one.

In a more complex application, perhaps an online store driven by a large database of varied products, it might be better to have seperate form pages/action pages/included function pages ...

... or, I guess you could just get into OOP; but, maybe you already are...

ethought

Originally posted by dalecosp
I'd say that the approach eoghain/paulnaj describe is pretty common, as long as the project isn't a large one.

In a more complex application, perhaps an online store driven by a large database of varied products, it might be better to have seperate form pages/action pages/included function pages ...

... or, I guess you could just get into OOP; but, maybe you already are...

Well, most of my background is in OO langauges. Primarily JAVA. However, I like PHP for more non OO projects and tasks. But I still appreciate the MVC methodology. So that is why I generally like to seperate actions into seperate files. And I typically use Smarty to seperate my View. Thanks for all the replies. But let me ask one more question.

Is there a common naming scheme when seperating your view from your action rather than using one file to do it all?

Thanks

Gregg

dalecosp

I doubt it --- here's one possibility, though:

insert_item_form.php --- form page
insert_item.php --- action page

This seems to be a convention used by Luke Welling/Laura Thomson in "PHP/MySQL Web Development" (2d ed.) SAMS ...

ethought

Originally posted by dalecosp
I doubt it --- here's one possibility, though:

insert_item_form.php --- form page
insert_item.php --- action page

This seems to be a convention used by Luke Welling/Laura Thomson in "PHP/MySQL Web Development" (2d ed.) SAMS ...

Perfect. Thanks.

Gregg