question on design/logic issue

cornercuttinjoe

im kind of stuck on something, and because this is my first php job, i dont really know how to solve it.

basically, i have one form with a drop down box, say this box has values 1, 2, and 3. this form, like any other, is sent by clicking a submit button.

now if the user chooses value 1, i need to go to form_a, if the user chooses value 2, i need to go to form_b, and 3 is form_c.

how exactly do i do this, while still $_POST'ing the data to this next form. i have tried changing what goes in the action attribute in the <form> tag, but it doesnt seem to work.

any clues on this? i dont really need any code, im just kind of stuck on my design. can you use php to change the destination in the <form action"..."> tag?

do i need to use javascript to decide how to redirect the page?

i tried making my own redirect page based on the values that were passed from the first form, but i found that i could not get the header() function to redirect after i made a call to the database.

any clues would help out a lot. thanks a head of time.

thorpe

php wont know what option has been chosen untill the form has been submitted. it is javascript you are looking for, and yes, it can change the forms action based on a selection before the form is ever submitted.

fire_cracker

Now, I am not sure that I understand the problem fully; however, I think that you are trying to process a form differently based on a user's selection. YOu could achieve this using If/Else Statements. Then the form's action remains the same no mater which option they select.

I.E.:

if($form_option == 1) {
  //Code for form_a
}
elseif($form_option == 2) {
  //Code for form_b
}
elseif($form_option == 3) {
  //code for form_c
}
else{
  //user made a mistake, show the form again
}

It cuts down on the amount of files on the server, and also eleminates the need for JavaScript, since the user has the option to disable in their browser, making your script not function at all.

cornercuttinjoe

yeah, both options seem to be the correct one.

i have no experience with javascript, so avoiding that would be nice, but in all reality, there is five different choices the user can make, so there are five different forms that i am going to write.

so i also dont like the idea that much of creating some huge php script that will handle all five forms, altho now that i think about it, a lot of the code could be reused since some of the forms will have the same entries. experience has told me the smaller you can keep your scripts, the better, because your error debugging is better and its easier to avoid confusion. im not really worried about the number of files on the server, the system i am doing has only 20 to 30 pages.

so it looks like i have a decision to make, unless there is some other way to do it.

i could also use session variables to store which form was used, and then have my own redirect page that would just forward the user to the right form based on the $_POST info, but that just seems like bad programming to me, even as a beginning php coder.

i really, really appreciate your help. any help/criticism is welcome. i only want to do things the right/efficient way.

thanks. any more suggestions are appreciated.

leatherback

Hi Cornerc.

Firecrackers code might work. but if you get many options, it becomes a long process to create this.

The switch statement was made for multiple optiions processing, and is much more efficient.

cornercuttinjoe

well, i figured out what i am doing, in case anyone is curious.

i read up a little on javascript, and created a simple function to do what i wanted.

i had a function that just looked at the value of the drop down box and then set the document.form.action equal to a url based on the selection. i then added this to the <input type="submit"> tag by the onclick event.

it looked something like this

<htlm>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
<!-- //
function where_to_go()
{
var select = document.form1.check_box_name;
var index = select.selectedIndex;
var selectedVal = select.options[index].value;

if (selectedVal == "option_a")
{
      document.form1.action = "form_a.php";
      return true;
 }

 else if (selectedVal == "option_b")
 {
       document.form1.action = "form_b.php";
      return true;
 }

}
// -->
</script>

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" onclick="return where_to_go();"/>
</html>

This let me do what i wanted while being able to $_POST the info to the next page.

I at least would show how i fixed my problem since people tried to help me. I appreciate it.