Problem with a "quiz"

[frech]

Hi to everybody!

I have a problem with a sort of quiz page I'm making in PHP with MySQL.

I have two pages, let's say page1.php and page2.php. Page1.php queries a database to build the quiz, pulling the questions and the possible choices from the datas in the database. Then, using POST, it sends the form to page2.php, which controls the datas and shows the results.

Unfortunately, page2.php shows only the questions, the corrected answer but not the answers made by the user.
Could someone tell me why?

Here's some pieces of code I think "responsible":
--- page1.php ---
for ($c = 0; $c <= 3; $c++) // choices for every lineare per riga: 4
{
echo "<td>";
echo "<input type=\"radio\" name=$given_answer[$a] value=$possible_choices[$c]>";
echo $possible_choices[$c];
echo "</td>";
}

Note: of course I put a session_start(); command in both pages, to make them work.
These are some lines of page1.php:

$SESSION['NUMBER_OF_QUESTIONS] = NUMBER_OF_QUESTIONS; // remembers the total number of questions
$SESSION['question'] = $question; // remembers the question
$SESSION['given_answer'] = $given_answer; // remembers the answer given by the user
$SESSION['rigth_answer'] = $rigth_answer; // remembers the right answers

So every information is stored in $_SESSION, but only NUMBER_OF_QUESTIONS, $question and $rigth_answer are "remembered", not $given_answer

Please help!

[frech]

Sorry, I made a mistake and I have to point out something. Here are the lines from page1.php:

--- page1.php ---
for ($c = 0; $c <= 3; $c++) // choices for every line: 4
{
echo "<td>";
echo "<input type=\"radio\" name=$given_answer[$a] value=$possible_choices[$c]>";
echo $possible_choices[$c];
echo "</td>";
}

All these lines are included in a for cicle, in which $a adct as a counter:

for ($a = 0; $a < NUMBER_OF_QUESTIONS; $a++)

Hope this helps, it would be too long to post and translate into English both pages!

[Roger_Ramjet]

One solution would be to create a temporary table for the session with fields for the question, 4 possible answers, correct answer and the user's selected choice. Every time the user selects one of your radio buttons a query would update the temp table. Your data, including the user's answers, would then be readily available for display on the next page. Temporary tables are per connection so you can use the same name for all users regardless of how many are concurrently connected; they are dropped once the connection is dropped.

This simple solution is the one I would use, but then I'm from a mainstream database background and prefer to let the DB engine do the work rather than writing scripts. This solution would also make it easy to calculate the score, seperate and display correct and incorrect answers, save the test, etc.

[frech]

One solution would be to create a temporary table for the session with fields for the question, 4 possible answers, correct answer and the user's selected choice. Every time the user selects one of your radio buttons a query would update the temp table. Your data, including the user's answers, would then be readily available for display on the next page. Temporary tables are per connection so you can use the same name for all users regardless of how many are concurrently connected; they are dropped once the connection is dropped.

Hmmmm... I see. Well, it could be.
First I thought the problem was in the fact that I forgot one stupid thing (ya know, the errors that even real and expert programmers have problem to find because they're so simple...): I tried to take values from an array in $SESSION instead of $POST... :o
Tried to change: no result. Those fields seem not assigned.
So I suppose you're right.

Should I create that temporary table with a script in my page?

And this piece of code, the one to create the possible choices, is grammatically correct, in your opinion?

echo "<input type=\"radio\" name=$given_answer[$a] value=$possible_choices[$c]>";

Thanks a lot 4 your help!

Frech

[Roger_Ramjet]

Personally speaking, I would seperate the two operations: extract the data for display : display the data

If you have a function that takes in a create table script or parameters and produces the temp table you can include it wherever its needed.

You can also generalise your data display pages and scripts. In this case, you might want to vary the display so that the user could, eg. look at all the comments for 1 team member, rather than look at your own comments about all other team members. Just change the creat table query and the same page will display the different data. Or you can have differant scripts for differant display formats and differant output devices like the new web-phones.

You can also have single functions that will, eg. output a csv file and just pass it the temp table name; or format a printer friendly page; etc.