PHP and OnClick

mweston

I am writing an application that utilizes PHP and MySQL.

I have a form that I would like to prefill with user information that is obtained from a MySQL database.

So far I have a field that a person can enter a username or partial username and lookup the user information and insert it into the form.

The way it is setup now is I have two files one that does the lookup and generates a list of people to select from..then submits the username to the form which is used to create a helpdesk ticket.(it's helpdesk software I'm writing)

I am trying to combine the two at least partially. What I would like to do is have the lookup on the same page as the form used to create the ticket.

My problem is how do I do I get the page to do the lookup once a person enters a name and presses the lookup button.

One other issue is what if no user is found and the person wants to use the create ticket button at the bottom of the page to insert the ticket into the database?

Any ideas on how to implement this. I have a way of using multiple pages as I stated earlier but, that can get troublesome if I add the lookup to the page with the rest of the form.

devinemke

if i undertsand you logic correctly, here is the basic idea (in pseudo-code):

if (!isset($_POST['submit']))
{
  // display the lookup form
}

if (isset($_POST['submit']) && $_POST['submit'] == 'lookup')
{
  // connect to db
	// query for partial matches of submitted username
	// display the list of suggested matches along with the other fields for the ticket	
}

if (isset($_POST['submit']) && $_POST['submit'] == 'submit ticket')
{
  // connect to db
	// insert ticket data into database	
}

mweston

yes that's what I'm trying to do and that looks like a great suggestion. =)
is there anyway to get it to insert the info from the database into the form without it looking like you are changing to a different page for the user?

devinemke

mweston wrote:
is there anyway to get it to insert the info from the database into the form without it looking like you are changing to a different page for the user?

there must be communication between the client and server for what is entered into the form to be used to query the database. if you do not wish to make the user submit the form you must some type of asynchronous communication like AJAX (google suggest is a good example)