Easiest way to GO BACK to a form, display a message and keep all the values there

wheeler08

I have a form that collects information then passes it to a PHP form to check if a matching record exists in the database.

When it finds a match, what is the easiest way to REDISPLAY the form with all the values still in it AND have an error message show up at the top AFTER it has searched the database and found the record already exists?

Do I need another page that is identical to the first one? Or can I redisplay the first page? If so, how do I get the error message to show up the second time, but not the first time?

ALSO - is there anyway to pass variable values OTHER than putting them in the URL? i.e. www.whatever.com?userid=10 ?

Thanks!

stolzyboy

simple something like this, i'm not gonna show the full code but i think you will get the idea

<html>
<head>
	<title>Page.php</title>
</head>
<body>
<?
if ($_POST['submit'] == "Submit")
{
//if submit button is clicked fill in form with values
// and do whatever error checking/db interaction you want here
?>
<form action="page.php" method="post">
all your inputs with value="<? echo $_POST['nameoffieldfrompreviousform']; ?>"
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
<?
}
else
{
//show first form if submit is not clicked
?>
<form action="page.php" method="post">
all your inputs
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
<?
}
?>
</body>
</html>

wheeler08

I think you might have misunderstood what I meant.

I have a form that a user enters values into (i.e. add new client)
After clicking the submit button, I want to match the values entered by the user against those in the database.
If the values already exist, I want to redisplay the page with not only an error message say, "This client already exists, please enter a new one", but also KEEP all the values that they have entered (so they don't have to fill the form out again.

Oh wait! I think I see where you are going with this... give me a minute and I'll see if I can figure it out!

paulsbooker

you can pass hidden information in a form as follows

you could then use this variable on the page the posting goes to (which is specified in you action argument ) as follows

$_POST[userid]

which will have the value 10 if echoed out to the screen

kind regards
paul

GilesGuthrie

Why don't you create the form in a file (say form.php). This form can detect whether an action is set, if so, it populates all the field names with their own values.

Then pass it to handler.php.

Handler detects your condition, sets an action (see above), shows an error message, and then goes include("form.php").

Form then fills itself out with the data that was just passed.

Get me?

HTH 🙂