[RESOLVED] preserve data in forms

mikesch

Hi,

I have a simple HTML page where I have to fill out a form. (Radio buttons, input text, textarea, etc.) When the user hits "Submit", a new page is called where I check for the required data from the form. If anything that's required is missing, the user is redirected to the HTML page with the form. The problem is that whatever partial data was entered previously, now it is gone...

Is there a way to ease the user's mind from retyping everything rather than entering only the missing part(s)?

Thank you.

h4x0rmx

Ok, what you can do is that you post the data to the same form.
Check for the required fields, if there are missing fields just display the form again
and echo the values received with somethig like:

<input type="text" name ="fname" value="<?php if(isset($_POST['fname'])) echo $_POST['fname']; ?>" />

but If you get all the data you want, you do the things you've got to do: store the data on the db or whatever you want, if you do this with success is then when you redirect the user to the page you're now posting your form.

I hope you understand me! 😉

mikesch

I get the idea. But it's still not working. Here's what I have:

This is part of the HTML page where the textarea is:

<body>
<h2>Title:<h2><input type="text" name="title" value="<?php if(isset($POST['title'])) echo $POST['title']; ?>" size="50"/><br />
   <h4>URL Title (only for Press Releases):</h4><input type="text" name="urltitle" value="<?php if(isset($POST['urltitle'])) echo $POST['urltitle']; ?>" size="50"/><br />
<h4>Subtitle:</h4><input type="text" name="subtitle" value="<?php if(isset($POST['subtitle'])) echo $POST['subtitle']; ?>" size="50"/><br /><br />

<h2>Content:</h2><textarea name="content" value="<?php if(isset($POST['content'])) echo $POST['content']; ?>" rows="20" cols="50" wrap="virtual"></textarea><br /><br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />

</form>
</body>
</html>

Then, when the Submit button is clicked the second page is called where I check for the required fields. Here's the code:

<?php
//check for required fields from the form
if ((!$POST[pubclass]) || (!$POST[title]) || (!$_POST[content])) {
header("Location: pressrelease.php");
exit;}

I guess, I would have to "re POST" the set vars back to the first page?

Cent

One way of doing it is to have the form (let's call it form.php) post back to itself.

Here's a simple version of FORM.PHP:


$error = true;

if ($_POST['action'] == 1)
{
   // check other posted variables
   // if everything is what you wanted
   // cleanse the data and write it to a DB or something
   // set $error to false if everything is successful
   if (!$error)
   {
      header("location: thankyou.php");
      exit;
   }
}

// echo or include() your form here since its the first time or there was an error

then in your actual form, you could just use h4x0rmx's idea of repopulating the form with the data.

Best,
Cent

mikesch

Thanks. The last line is not clear:

// echo or include() your form here since its the first time or there was an error

How do I echo the form?

Cent

Sorry. Was in bit of a hurry last time.

So, below would be FORM.PHP or whatever you want to call your forms page. Here it is in more detail. It assumes we're just checking for a name and email address.

<?php

$error = true; 

if ((isset($_POST['action'])) && ($_POST['action'] == 1))
{ 
	// check other posted variables 
	// if everything is what you wanted 
	// cleanse the data and write it to a DB or something 
	// set $error to false if everything is successful 
	if (!$error) 
	{ 
		header("location: thankyou.php"); 
		exit; 
	}
} 

?>


<html>
	<head>
		<title>My Form</title>
	</head>

<form method="post" action="form.php">

<!-- set the test variable to 1 //-->
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="1" />

Name: <input type="text" name="name" value="<?php if(isset($_POST['name'])) echo $_POST['name']; ?>"><br/>
Email: <input type="text" name="email" value="<?php if(isset($_POST['email'])) echo $_POST['email']; ?>"><br/>

<input type="submit" name="submit" value=" Submit " />

</form>

</html>

The first time you run the script, there will not be a $_POST['action'] form param set yet so it will simply show the form. And since there will be no values for the form elements, those will just have empty values.

Once the user submits the form, the action param gets set and you will need to do some error checking on your side. If the error checking is successful, just set $error to false and it will do the redirect after you were done. Otherwise, it will show the form again and populate it with whatever was originally entered. You'd have to write some loops to populate HTML form selects if you have any.

Disregard my mention of echoing the form. You could either use it as it or put the form into a separate file in which case you would include() it -- that's how I usually do things.

Hope that makes it clearer.

Best,
Cent.

mikesch

Thanks very much. I accidentally figured it out in the meantime, but something's still not clear. I'm using your technique to populate the areas if there's in error and I need to redirect. But I do the error checking on the second page that was called through the FORM/POST action.

Here's the error checking from the second page:

<?php
//check for required fields from the form
if ((!$POST[pubclass]) || (!$POST[title]) || (!$_POST[content])) {
include 'pressrelease.php';
exit;
}
?>

As I said, it works just fine, except I don't quite understand what the include statement does. It invokes the 'pressrelease.php', ok but what about the globals? $_POST? I assume they're included as well, otherwise when I try to populate the areas that were filled previously, I wouldn't know the data.

Cent

In my example, you would do the form error checking on the FORM.PHP file itself after the first IF statement. If there's no errors, then you can redirect to a thank you page or some other place.

If you need to then have those form variables populate a 2nd page after error checking is successful, then you could do a

include("my2ndpage.php");

or you could set some session variables after doing your error check, redirect the user to the 2nd page and get the session variables back (which are transparent to the user) to then populate the 2nd page.

Best,
Cent

mikesch

Thanks again.