Form field "re-population"

[Mr_Mako]

Hi...

I have several forms users fill out on my site that contain a lot of fields. Some of these fields are required... and if they attempt to submit the form without those fields populated, then they get an error on the submission page telling the user which fields they neglected to fill out. So then, the user hits the "back" button on the browser to the original form.

The problem is that, with some of the bigger forms, all that data that the user entered is now gone... and they have to re-enter everything again.

Is there a way to re-populate all the fields that had data in them when the user hits the "back" button (or a link I create that would do something like that)? I've seen it on other pages online but don't know how they've accomplished it.

[nemonoman]

Back buttons are browser based and can have undetermined results re: forms. Sometimes forms seem to retain data, sometimes not. The browser decides, and it will vary from event to event even in the same website.

You probably want a 'make changes' button, which specifically repopulates the form with data from the $_POST...I think we treated this topic in a previous message. That way you control that the form will be presented with the user's data populated.

[BuzzLY]

I would suggest stuffing the form field values into session variables. Have the page always try to access the session variables to pre-populate the fields. If you are visiting the page for the first time, the fields will be blank. If you are reloading the page, whether from a back button or any other method (I suggest redirecting them back to that page automatically), and there are values in the Session variables, the fields will automatically contain the appropriate data.

Doing it this way will also allow you to pre-fill in some fields with default data, if you ever have the need to do so. All you have to do is set the appropriate session variable before loading the page.