wierd form error

sarahk

Happy New Year everyone!

Within a form I have the following html

<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=1>
<tr>
<td><input type='submit' name='searchdate' value='<<' ></td>
<td colspan='5' align='center'><input type='submit' name='searchdate' value='February 2005'></td>
<td><input type='submit' name='searchdate' value='>>' ></td>
</tr>

There are 3+ submit buttons called 'searchdate'
In my script I look at the value of searchdate.

If I click on the first button then searchdate should be <<
but...
$POST carries the right value
$REQUEST carries an empty string

If I click on the other buttons both $POST and $REQUEST carry the same value.

Can anyone explain this?

bastien

Hi Sarah,

I tested your problem with Zend and the following code

<?
if (isset($_POST['searchdate'])){
	echo "post:".$_POST['searchdate'];
	echo "<br>request:".$_REQUEST['searchdate'];
}else{
	?>
<form action="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>" method="post">
<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=1>
<tr>
<td><input type='submit' name='searchdate' value='<<' ></td>
<td colspan='5' align='center'><input type='submit' name='searchdate' value='February 2005'></td>
<td><input type='submit' name='searchdate' value='>>' ></td>
</tr>
</form>
<?
}
?>

and had no problems with IE. Both Mozilla broswers (FF and Moz) showed only 1 < bracket...even with double quotes for the values and only on the <

I then tried to change the < to <input type='submit' name='searchdate' value="<<" > and that got the same result...most interesting...

seems like a bug in the request code to me

rehfeld

have you set any cookies?

REQUEST contains data for GET, POST, COOKIE, in that order. any value in COOKIE would overwrite any values from POST, and POST overwrites GET....

using _REQUEST is generally a sloppy way to code. sometimes its definately the handy tool, but only use it if its warranted.

Roger_Ramjet

Why not take the pragmatic approach, and do the right thing at the same time, and just use unique names for each button. Then you won't have to worry about parsing special chars to determine which button was clicked.

I know of NO reason why you would need 2 submit buttons with the same name, and it is NOT right according to the RFC.

And a Happy New Year to all the other geeks on this forum at this time on a New Year's Eve (personally I'm just tired of drunks so I'm here avoiding them)

sarahk

Originally posted by rehfeld
using REQUEST is generally a sloppy way to code. sometimes its definately the handy tool, but only use it if its warranted.

No cookies with the same name. I'm using Mambo CMS and they appear to have a convention around $REQUEST. I have no problem moving away from it but I wanted to be sure that I was doing it for a valid reason.

Originally posted by Roger Ramjet
Why not take the pragmatic approach, and do the right thing at the same time, and just use unique names for each button. Then you won't have to worry about parsing special chars to determine which button was clicked.

It's calendar code so I was trying to avoid cruising through 31+3 variables to see which one exists. I'll stop being lazy, after all I only have to code it once 🙂

thanks for the replies

Sarah

sarahk

Originally posted by bastien
and had no problems with IE. Both Mozilla broswers (FF and Moz) showed only 1 < bracket...even with double quotes for the values and only on the <

That's so wierd, I hadn't tested with IE, only firefox and the screen looked right, it was after submitting that it all went haywire.

It could because of the duped buttons. I'm going to change that.

Sarah