Button Help needed

edon

I am a newbie so please forgive me if I am overlooking the obvious. ( I actually spent a lot of time searching the web but failed to find the answer - I think it was because I just did not know what to ask the search engines.)

I have a script that when it loads reads from my database and displays the information on the page. it also loads some of this info into variables.

I want to add a button to the page that with a single click:
calls a function that uses the above variables, updates the database and then refreshes the page.

Reading and writing to the database is no problem for me at this point.
Up to now I have just been entering my info in a form and then submitting.

Creating a button that calls a function is where I need help.

Any help would be very appreciated.

Regards
Edon

jasonmills58

hey edon, i'm new too, but i just did something like this recently. I like to have my submit button call another page (say, update.php) which defines and calls the function, updates the DB, - basically all the work, and at the end, jumps back to your display.php page, without you ever seeing that update.php page working. i find it to work nice and clean.

let me know if you want to see some code.

cheers!

leatherback

Hi Edon,

I am not so new to this anymore ;-)

It depends a little on what you want to display after updating. i suppose there is a form involved?

I usually have a set ov variables defining the header, body and footer of my pages. :

$head
$footer
$body

The first two I load from files, which holds all sort of universal settings, so I do not need to update them in every page if I decide I want to change some includes, passwords etcetc.
Anyway.. The page ends with:

echo $head;
echo $body;
echo $footer;

Now when loading the page, you can start with checking wether a form has been submitted. I do this by including a hidden variable in the form:

<form action=***Thispage*** method=POST name=form1>
<input type=hidden name=form1action value=update>
</form>

And placing this section of php in the phpcode:

if($_POST['form1action'] == 'update');
 {
  here all your update routines & $body = something
 }
 else
 {
 $body = "YourForm";
 }

/* From here you can place any other code to get the page. You could even decide not to place the $body=YourForm in the else lop, but just afterwards.
*/

So not you have it all in one page.

Hope this helps?

jasonmills58

mmmm, calling MULTIPLE pages - now thats smart. thanks leatherback! (smacks forehead why didn't i think of that...)

😕

leatherback

Hey Jason,

eehm.. are we being cynical? I know.. It is still early, had just over 6 hours of sleep and all.. But is there a mistake in the code? Or are you serious, and 😃 Do you think I am smart! 😃

jasonmills58

No no, I really think you're smart. I'm pretty new at this, and I do things in weird ways that kinda work, but I want to make them more, um, elegant. Thats the word - elegant. Right now, most of my stuff is pretty hack-n-slash, so I'm trying to make it better. I can see why that might have sounded sarcastic, but I wasn't meaning it that way.

leatherback

Hey

No worries,

We all started at a certain point, and I am sure there is not too many who started off with writing function, shopping carts and classes. But in the end everybody does it ;-)

It is just a matter of checking this forum every once in a while (do you use the "mark all forum read" and "read new posts" features?) and reading some scripts from other people. And being creative sometimes.

Especially in the coding area a lot of nice solutions to this sort of problems show up.. (Especially keep track of some of these 1000++ posts people. They often have very elegant solutions!

enjoy.

edon

Thanks Guys,

I think this might be a start for me.
If i understand you. You want me to create a submit button that calls a new page.

However, I indicated only one button in my first post (for simplicity) however, I really need 4 buttons. That each do a different thing. It is also important that a single click from the user is all that is needed.

Can I have four submit buttons on my Main page? Each passing a different value to the second page where a set of IF statements decides which function to run?

If this sounds like what you are sugesting, how do I create the buttons?
Something like
<input type="submit" name"submit" value="button1">
<input type="submit" name"submit" value="button2">
<input type="submit" name"submit" value="button3">
<input type="submit" name"submit" value="button4">

Is the Value = "button1" the variable that I am passing to the second page?

Thank you patience and for all past and future replys.

Regards,
Edon

leatherback

Hi,

Hm.. Perhaps you can explain WHAT you are trying to do? That makes t a bit esier (and more efficient) then reading between your lines and figuring out wether the question you posted is actually ginving you the answer you need..

Thanks,

edon

Thanks for your patience leatherback.

I am trying to create a game and I have a table in my database with X, Y coordinates that store location information. The fields I am concerned with are X_loc, Y_loc Z_loc .

I need 4 buttons that when pressed either increment or decrement the X or Y location. This is so I can have a character move through my virtual world. Basically a button for N, S, W, and E.

If I press the North button I want to run a function that increments $X. Pulls the new location from the database and displays the results. If I press the South button I want a function that decrements $X.
I am getting proficient with reading and writing to my database.
However, I think if I can use the buttons as I mentioned earlier to pass a variable to a script and let the If statements decide which function to run, I will be on the right track.

I will try tonight after I get off of work.

Regards,
Edon