Remembering Form Values in a session enviroment

Rulkster

Hi,

I have a simple shopping cart system. On my checkout page (it is SSL) I have a form to collect billing information. I am also using sessions on this page because there is a login functionality on the site so if you are logged in, the form populates with the customer information from a database.

Here is a problem I am having: When you click the submit button on the next screen I echo the information to the customer for approval and they can continue or click back to change their information in case they made a mistake. If they click back, all the fields are blank and they have to input all the information over again. Or if they are logged in, all the information gets repopulated from the database. Is there a way to display the form values that they have already entered.

My code looks something like this (this is very simplified)

<?
session_start();

if ($valid_user) {
// here I get the info from the database if user is logged in
// one value is $firstname
}

echo"
<form method=post action=approve.php>
Billing First Name:<input type=text name=bfirst value=$firstname>
<input type=submit name=submit value=submit>
</form>
";


?>

mrfritz379

Since you start a session whether or not the user is registered, why not just store the typed info into a new session variable?

<?
session_start();

if (!empty($_SESSION['info'])) {
  $firstname = $_SESSION['info']['firstname'];
}elseif ($valid_user) {
  $firstname = $user->getVar('firstname');
} else {
 $firstname = '';
}

echo'
<form method="post" action="approve.php">
Billing First Name:<input type="text" name="bfirst" value="'.$firstname.'">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit">
</form>';

?>

Rulkster

I thought about that. Using a session or a cookie but here is the problem. It still does not save the field value when a user is logged in. (If I am logged in and I pull first name from database it is brian, then on the form page I type Brad instead and click submit, when I click back the value for first name is back to brian (from database) and not Brad.

If I am not logged in and put Brian as first name, session gets saved first name is Brian. Then if I click Back and change Brian to Brad and click submit first name is still Brian and not Brad.

So sessions or cookies will not work.

Thanks anyway for your response

mrfritz379

For those cases, I would use a checkbox to notify the script that information has been changed.

<?php
echo "<p>".$user->getVar('firstname')."</p>";
?>
<h3>Or to enter new information, check the box below</h3>
<input type="checkbox" name="change" value="true" onClick="enableForm('userinfo');" />
<form ....... >
<!--form information here, input boxes initially disabled, enabled by the javascript above-->
</form>

Then the script that validates the form info might look something like this:

<?php
if ($valid_user && $_POST['change'] != "true") {
  //validate form information
  $_SESSION['forminfo']['firstname'] = $user->getVar('firstname');
} else {
  //validate form information
  $_SESSION['forminfo']['firstname'] = $_POST['firstname'];
}

That way if the user does click the back button the session information holds the entered form information if the user is not registered or the check box has not been checked.