processing a form

Abdi

Hi everyone,

i was playing with PHP tutorial from a webmonkey everything worked well untl I came to this point where I was trying to learn how to process a form where the contents of form is processed
by the same code in the file by using this technique a program that calls it self :

<form method="post" action="<?php echo $PHP_SELF?>">

first I want to know how does this work having the form and processing part when the user clicks the submit button checking the code i supplied below

second I would like to know How can you separate the form
and the processing section into two separate files

third when I put some information into the form it just clears the form, it doesn't show me the processing result. can anyone see what is going on ?

Here is the code:


<html>

<body>

<form method="post" action="<?php echo $PHP_SELF?>">

First name:<input type="Text" name="first"><br>

Last name:<input type="Text" name="last"><br>

Address:<input type="Text" name="address"><br>

Position:<input type="Text" name="position"><br>

<input type="Submit" name="submit" value="Enter information">

</form>



</body>

</html>



<html>

<body>

<?php



if ($submit) {

  // process form

  while (list($name, $value) = each($HTTP_POST_VARS)) {

echo "$name = $value<br>\n";

  }

} // end if



?>



</body>



</html>

I thank you in advance

LordShryku

First and foremost: You're probably having trouble because register_globals is off. You should be coding as if they are off, even if they are on. This way, i you ever need to move your code to another host, and they have register_globals off, it's going to work, either way. Read more about that here

Now on to your questions:

1) $PHP_SELF (should be $SERVER['PHP_SELF']) tell it to submit to the same page. Using if ($submit) { (should be $POST['submit']), says "if this page was submitted, then process it"

2) The better option IMHO, since I'm not a an o submitting to PHP_SELF. You would change the action in the form tag from $PHP_SELF to the name of the processing page. Then just move all your code to process the form onto that page.

3) Probably a register_globals problem. Hard to say since all your doing is looping through the results.

HTH