Form Validation Strangeness

darkgr33n

Hi All

New to the forum, new-ish to PHP and currently stuck (obviously!)

I am running a multi-page form, which collects data to print out a PDF. All things seem to be working fine. However, I have just set up a beta site and things are not as they should be.

The problem is the form validation.

On my local site (IIS - PHP v5.0.4) and live site (PHP v4.3.2), everything is good.

On submission of the first page, my beta site (PHP v5.1.2) seems to read the previous pages data as $_POST data.

My validation is as follows

each page uses the same validation - a form object

which should stop the page processing any data with this check

if (isset($POST['process']) && $POST['process'] == '1')
{
// process form data validation
header ("Location: nextpage.php");
exit();
}
else
{
display form
}

So, this works fine on my IIS site and LIVE site. If the submit button is pressed, the form goes through the validation and, if correct, moves to the next page. The next page display a clean blank form, and everyone is a happy bunny. 🙂

However, on my new BETA site, when submitting the first page, the second page seems to attempt to process the form instantly, and runs through the validation script. It seems to read the previous pages 'process' variable in error.

I'm not really up on headers etc, but I wonder if anyone recognises this behaviour, and can suggest a solution!?

Thanks in advance

Paul

Blulagoon

Try replacing:

if (isset($POST['process']) && $POST['process'] == '1')

with

if (isset($POST['process']) && ($POST['process'] == '1'))

Blu

darkgr33n

Thanks Blu

Unfortunately this didn't work.

The value check

$_POST['process']=='1'

was a recent addition in trying to sort this out. Previously it was just the

isset($_POST['process'])

which works fine on the two other sites, just not on the new one.

I wondered if anything had changed in PHP5.1.2, or perhaps some sort of setup was required. I have gone throught the PHPINFO screens, and can see no obvious differences between the three sites.

Blulagoon

It is very strange. I've just upgraded to 5.1.2 so will try this on my machine and see what happens, actually just written a script which checks $_POST['submit'] isset which I'll try.

Meanwhile, I presume this is simply a typo ....
<in put type="hidden" name="process" value="1">

(the space betwen in and put)

Blu

jodie

Have you tried

if(empty($var))

if(!$var)

They might work, as this could be an issue to do with the PHP modules installed on your server. I remember having a problem like this last year.

Houdini

Could it be that this does not set process=1?

<in put type="hidden" name="process" value="1">

That could be a typo but in put might not actually work as input, I could be wrong though!

darkgr33n

Blu: It is strange indeed! I would be interested to hear how you go

Jodie: Thanks - I tried both of your suggestions, but I'm afraid neither worked for me. if (empty($var)) actually needs to be !empty, otherwise the validation will never go through, and !$var worked locally, but gave me the same results when on my new beta version!

Houdini (and Blu): Yep, typo I'm afraid ... ah, if only it was that simple! It definaltely works on two versions of my site, and the version not working is a complete copy, which is why I think maybe its a setup error ... ??

Cheers for trying though, its appreciated!

Paul

Blulagoon

FWIW 😃

All my !isset and isset statements work fine under PHP 5.1.2 with IIS 5 and Win2K

samudasu

Do a print_r and see if the post values are correct and then with header(), input the full url for the page (http://localhost/nextpage.php) and not a relative path.

print "<pre>" . print_r($_POST, true) . "</pre>";
if (isset($_POST['process']) && $_POST['process'] == '1') {
    // process form data validation
    header ("Location: http://localhost/nextpage.php");
    exit();
} else {
    display form
}

darkgr33n

thanks samudasu

I put the code into the page and all seems well - the relevant result would be I can see we're sending the process variable out

[process] => 1

what I do as part of the form validation (after the check isset($_POST['process'])) is this:

foreach ($POST as $key => $value)
{
$$key = $value;
$SESSION[$key] = $value;
}

setting each form field to a $_SESSION variable, so by the end I can process all variables.

Perhaps I need to clear the process variable before the header () ? I did think about this, but wondered why this version does it and the other don't.

Perhaps I'm not doing the correct way at all as it seems that the next page reads the

$_SESSION['process'] from the previous page

$_POST['process']

when it first runs through the initial script, and before the validation check:

if (isset($POST['process']) && $POST['process'] == '1') {

it seems strange though, that the other two versions of this code I am running, do not do this.

Any ideas - is clearing the process session the best way ? do we know why I can get away with it for six months, then all of a sudden, my new beta site falls over ?

thanks for all your help so far - its good not to be alone!

Blu: Thanks for letting me know you isset's work fine !!

Paul

darkgr33n

have tried adding something to clear both the session and post ['process'], but nothing works!!

its really frustrating to spend a day trying to get something working on one server, when it works on two others, both of which run different versions of PHP!

arrrggghh!

Paul

samudasu

Perhaps I'm not doing the correct way at all as it seems that the next page reads the
$SESSION['process'] from the previous page
as
$POST['process']

You didn't say anything about using sessions before. Are you saying that $_SESSION['process'] doesn't exist here? I'm not exactly sure how your code works since i can only see little bits of it. If you're setting a session variable then you should call session_write_close() before calling header() or else sometimes the session variables won't get set.

print "<pre>" . print_r($_POST, true) . "</pre>";
if (isset($_POST['process']) && $_POST['process'] == '1') {
    // process form data validation
    session_write_close();
    header ("Location: http://localhost/nextpage.php");
    exit();
} else {
    display form
}

darkgr33n

Thanks for your reply samudasu, and sorry for not being so clear - not knowing something very well means the description of the problem is often pretty poor!

To illustrate the problem better, I made cut-down versions of the two pages with just one variable to pass ... and would you believe it, THEY worked!!

With so few variables to deal with, I could try some other stuff, and now have the problem almost SOLVED.

It was my header() statement!

The site was built without any prior knowledge of PHP.

Because I run 3 versions of my site (a local IIS version, a beta version for testing and checking, and the live version which runs under [url]https://)[/url], I was using a variable for the server name to use in the header statement, to prevent having to keep changing it between sites. The variable was held in another file that I included.

Now, of course, I have discovered $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']

Not sure why my variable version worked on two sites, and not on the third, but it now works with all three

Thanks all for your time in looking at my problem, and I apologise that it was something idiotic!!

So now, all I need is an elegant way to distinguish between http: and https, and add that to my header statement.

so far this works, but not sure if it will raise a few eyebrows with people who know PHP ..!!

$hyper = ($SERVER['HTTPS']=='on') ? 'https://' : 'http://';
header ("Location: " . $hyper . $SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . "/savings/" . $next_page);

Thanks again

Paul

darkgr33n

actually, this seems to work too, and is down to one line.

header ("Location: " . ($SERVER['HTTPS'] == 'on' ? 'https://' : 'http://') . $SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . "/savings/" . $next_page);

Paul