passing variables between frames? - urgent help needed

muratisik

Hello,
I am very new to web designing and what I would like to ask involves both javascript and php. I hope it is not a problem to ask here since it is also related to javascript

I have a web page with two frames, vertically seperated, left one being thin with buttons in it and right one being a php page.

At the first load of the page, some variable on the right php page (like $example) has no value. What I am trying to accomplish is that when the user presses a button on the left frame, some javascript will work and reload the right hand frame and give the variable some new value, like $example=5

I had done this on a single frameless php page where the button at the end of the page served the same purpose. When the page was relaoded after the button was pressed $example had a new value through HTTP_POST_VARS.

Is this possible? If yes, how? I have desperately searched the net but found no answer. I will be very glad if you help

Thanks in advance...

Have a nice day

Murat Isik

aaron_karp

Well, what you can do is give the frames specific names when you first create them using FRAMESET. So let's name them "left" and "right"

When you click a button on the left side, give the link (or form) a "target" attribute which says "target=right"

For example,

<a href="page.php?example=42" target="right">BUTTON</a>

This will cause the link to affect the frame named "right"

Hope this helps...

Shrike

I think I see what you want.

Replicate your PHP variables in Javascript, and populate them at runtime. When someone presses a button in frame a, run some Javascript which updates the Javascript variable in frame b, e.g.

document.frames['framename'].varname.value = passedvalue;

Then if you want to get the variable data back to PHP, you'd need to have some more Javascript which would write the data to some HTML hidden fields to be submitted ina form or whatever.

Sorry if I got this wrong 🙂

muratisik

Thank you.
But as far as I can understand this solution is for having links on the left frame. I am trying to do it with buttons. How do I do it buttons? I suppose it involves javascript of which I know nothing...

aaron_karp

Do you mean form buttons? If so, your code should look like this:

note the target attribute in the Form tag.

muratisik

Yes, I mean those very simple and popular buttons, just like the submit button at the end of the page in which I am writing this reply. I dont know if they are called "form buttons". In some other site I found a javascript which has a button (sorry about my newbei words) and which can trigger another javascript in another frame. So I thought I can use this one if I had a script which will only write to hidden field of the HTML and refresh the page within the page. Then I have this script triggered from anotherframe and that will do. Do you have such a script for manipulating hidden HTML values and refreshing the page?

Have a nice day.

Murat Isik

Shrike

Ah yes I got it wrong. It's not a PHP problem but anway:

Does it have to be a form button? It would be easier with a link as forms don't have target attributes. Anyway if it does need to be a form, put a button in frame a

and then add an onsubmit handler to the button: onsubmit="return runmyjavascriptfunction()"

The Javascript function will need to trap the form submission, return it false, and then do

document.frames['framename'].location.href = 'frameb.php?example='+document.forms[0].example.value

or something similar. To return the form false you need to have the function return false. This will stop the form actually submitting (since we've sent the data via Javascript)

Check out the Netscape guide to Javascript if you need some pointers

http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/3.0/handbook/javascript/

I haven't tested the syntax for the above so it might need fixing 🙂

hth