forms

[Butthead]

I'm trying to create a form that will echo the output to the screen. It's been a long time since I used to write PHP all the time.

I recall that I used to be able to use the form "name" and that would be where the variable was stored in php.

So I should be able to do something like

print "<form action='pg_test.php' method='post'>
<input type='text' name=areacode value="$areacode>
<input type='submit' value='tryit'>
</form>";

and then be able to do something like this in pg_test.

if ($areacode){
echo "you entered: $areacode";
}else{
print-the-form-again;
}

Am I way off? Is this still possible? I'm running into a lot of syntax changes since my days as a php coder....:-/

Man did I miss php though :-D

[Dark_Storm]

Umm. I am pretty sure that you don't mean naming the entire form like <form name="this">. But you are correct if you mean just the name of the input element. after you submit <input name="areacode"> then you will be able to call $areacode and print out whatever the user entered. You can't do that with checkboxes and radioboxes of course, but you can with textareas and select boxes. Also if you want you can enter the input element into an array by <input name="array[areacode]" which will create an array with areacode as an index and when you call $area[areacode] it will print out the data the user entered. When you have a select box that can have multiple values entered in to it, you can do like <select name="areacode[]"> and when you process the information just use $Line = each($areacode) and run it thru a while() loop.

[majiclab]

If your post is referring to the fact that you have already tried and failed at doing this, it is possbile that you have missed the whole register_globals issue while taking a break from PHP.

Nowadays, you generally can't just do this (depends on your server config):

<?php
print $areacode;
?>

As, generally, servers have register_globals turned off. It used to be on by default.

To print it out now, you would have to do something like this:

<?php
print $_POST[ 'areacode' ];
?>

Here are a couple links that might help:

http://ca.php.net/register_globals
http://ca.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php

Hope that helps!

-Percy

[Butthead]

Yikes! All that code I wrote way back when is really insecure. I even put it on an SSL connection and everything, but it doesn't even matter. Yikes! Glad I don't work there anymore.

Well, I definetelly don't want to turn globals back on, as I think I should re-learn the correct way, It's probably best I had this hiatus so I could forget ;-)

Now, I've changed my script over to use the $_POST stuff, but for some reason it sill doesn't display anything.

The script is setup like this in psuedo code

connect to DB
if (form was empty){
print "normal page";
}else{
do a sql query;
count the rows of the sql query;
if (the rows were less than 1){
print "the thing you searched for was not found";
print "the form again";
}else{
print "the thing was found";
}
}
disconnect from DB

The part that is broken is where it says the thing you searched for was not found. I know that the value is there, because it does do the sql query. How do I know you ask? Because I build the DB and I haven't finished the last part where the thing was found. If I input something I know is in the DB I just get a blank page. If I don't put anything in I get the intial page. So I know that it is getting a value.

I've attached the script

[majiclab]

I did a couple changes to your file. See how it works. I left some comments beside the changes I made.

-Percy