[RESOLVED] Form Processing Details

obrienkev

Hi all,

I am setting up a registeration form on my site. It will contain 3-4 pages. On each page the user enters his/her info and hits continue button.

All the information is to be stored in a mysql database.

My question is what is the best way to process the data into the database?

At the moment each time the user hits continue that data is entered into the database and updates the entry.

However the problem with this is if the user decides to discontinue in the 2nd or 3rd page then data which is useless will be in the database.

Any ideas on this?

Thanks.

Kevin.

thorpe

just pass all the values from one page to another using either hidden form fileds or sessions, then on the last page, insert all data into the database.

Roger_Ramjet

Or use a work table to store the data temporarily and only insert it into the main table when verified as complete. That way they could break off half way through and then return to finish registration at a later date. You would probably want to set a time limit on retention though.

obrienkev

How do I do error checking? i.e. ensure that certain fields are entered.

Basically what I want is... when the user hits continue on page1 s/he should be brought back to page1 if a field is left blank.

There should be a warning text message above the field that is blank.

How is this done??

Thanks.

Roger_Ramjet

Personally, I always do basic form checking with javascript first. It is easy enough and leads to a much better user experience as they do not have to wait for a page reload to find out they have missed a required field. Have a look at these examples and read some of the tutorials to see how its done.

Of course, you still have to validate the data once it has been submitted in case the user has js disabled. How you do that depends very much on the structure of your site and scripts. Here is an example.

// create a var to store the count of missing fileds
$missing = 0;
// test each required field and count it if missing
if (!isset($_POST['name'])) {
   $missing = missing++;
}
if (!isset($POST['email'])) {
   $missing = $missing++;
}

// then check to see if anything was missing, if not build page 2
if ($missing=0) {
   // page 2 script
}
else { // rebuild page 1 with a comment for each missing field
   echo '<form>';
   if (isset($_POST['name'])) {
      echo '<input type="text" name="name" value="' . $_POST['name'] . '">';
   } else {
      echo '<p>Your name is a required field</p>
               <input type="text" name="name">';
   }
// and so on for each field

There are lots of ways to do all of this - mine is just a simple example to give you the idea