Positioning Multiple Forms

gwalsh

I have built a 3 column template for use in eliciting responses to a set of test forms.

Each form consists of 'radio' type multiple choice items. All are designed to fit within the same
location (div) in the templete. I just do not understand how to locate the form content. In JavaScript that location was simply the defined target, but I am trying to get rid of JavaScript while I am redesigning with CSS. That space will be required during validation and then for the next test to be 'administered' by the master script.

I'm sure I can't see the answer because it is so d.... obvious!

jkurrle

I'm trying to follow your post, but it seems confusing to me. Are you trying to place one form per column? What exactly do you mean by "locate the form content"? You don't know what the form code is? You don't know where it posts to?

In HTML, the target is defined if you want to access another defined page/frame or a location within a page. If the "target=" qualifier is left out, your browser assumes you mean to use the browser page view you are currently on for the target.

Not sure if that's what you want, but I hope this helps...

gwalsh

I have no problem using JavaScript and HTML to place the form within a page. I was half-hoping I could leave JS out of our script/programs altogther, but I cannot because I want to address invalid responses as they occur, not after a form has been completed, which is the usual way but not one I want to employ in this application. So, that decision makes this topic kind of redundant for me now. Validating each item at my (server) end would be totally inefficient - downright ridiculous, actually!

So, JavaScript validates form input, and PHP5 will place the results in the scoring templates ( a MySQL table).

Thanks for taking the trouble to offer help here. It is appreciated.

George

Weedpacket

gwalsh wrote:
Validating each item at my (server) end would be totally inefficient - downright ridiculous, actually!

But do it anyway, because you can't trust the user's computer to do it.

samudasu

You'd be wise to take Weedpacket's advice. Never ever trust javascript to do serious validation. Think what would happen if i made my own form and pointed it at your script. There wouldn't be any validation at all, i'd be free to send whatever data i wanted to your script.

gwalsh

Hmmm

So there did not seem to me to be much to choose between PHP and JavaScript, because I am going to be forced to process one entire test section at a time, whether at my (server) side with PHP or their (client) side with JavaScript. If that is the case. I might as well use PHP and do everything at my end. Control, control, control!

When I referred to validating each item as being 'downright ridculous', I referred to requiring the candidate to first make a selection and then submit it. That would require, in the case of just one test section, 150 extra submits, and 300 extra packets back and forth between server and client.

What I am thinking of doing now, upon a form submit, is to validate and then, where necessary, generate a new form containing only the invalidated items. Messy for me, maybe, but clean for the candidate, obviously a "JavaScript free zone", and provides me easily with a key control feature - I do not want a candidate to continue to another section until the current one has been successfully completed.

Sound better?

I am very, very appreciative of your gentle guidance here. I want to use PHP for more than updating MySQL and I am not averse to dumping JavaScript - not in any way. But I did not want to find myself expecting to do what I patently would not have been able to do. Having just banished tables and gone to CSS strict for this application, I am not afraid of challenge, but everyone needs a candle in the darkness.

Again, my thanks to all for your thoughtful advice.

George