populating a form

slimjim

Hello
I have a form that has :
radio
checkbox
textfield
dropdown
input

all in one form

How can I populate the form from database
I am getting all info from one table in database called userinfo

If anyone can help me out here by showing me a good example, that would be great.
I have been all over online and trying to find a way to populate the whole form is not easy task, so if you could, thats cool.

thorpe

Do you know how to retrieve and display data from a database?

slimjim

yes of course.... forms are different

halojoy

You can pre-set any value in a <form>
A default value before anything is entered.
This is used for example, when a user Change and Update preferences

Basically like this

<?php

$val_email="";

if( isset($_POST['email']) ) {
    $val_email =  $_POST['email']; 
    // save new value into DB
    echo 'your email was updated';
}else{
    // read default email from DB
   $val_email = $mysql_value;
}
?>
<form method="POST">
Your new email:<br>
<input type="text" name="email" value="<?php echo $val_email; ?>"><br>
<input type="submit"></form>

slimjim

Yes but what about a radio or drop down or checbox, if a user goes to update his info, it needs to show what he has already set based on what is in database for his info. wouldnt make sence to have to add it all over again.
Getting values into textarea and input box is simple, but the others.. I cant figure it out.

halojoy

slimjim wrote:
Yes but what about a radio or dropdown or checkbox, if a user goes to update his info, it needs to show what he has already set based on what is in database for his info. wouldnt make sence to have to add it all over again.
Getting values into textarea and input box is simple, but the others.. I cant figure it out.

it is not more dificult with radio dropdown or checkbox
The knowledge you need is how those <form> elements are used in forms

I suggest looking for HTML FORM tutorials
http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/forms.php
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/forms/
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

Google search Form tutorials

Houdini

Well is depends on how your database has been set up. What I did with checkbox database was set up enum datafields for each of the possible values that could be entered via a form. Some thing like

cola ENUM("yes","no"),
beer ENUM("yes","no),
milk ENUM("yes","no"),
coffee ENUM("yes","no),
tea ENUM("yes","no")
...

Then my checkbox values would be written as an associative array with the name 'drinks' like below

<input type='checkbox' name='drinks['beer']' value='beer' />Beer<br />
<input type='checkbox' name='drinks['milk']' value='milk' />Milk<br />
<input type='checkbox' name='drinks['coffee']' value='coffee' />Coffee<br />
<input type='checkbox' name='drinks['tea']' value='tea' />Tea<br />

Now that you have a database structure for the drinks and a form to input the data with you just need to check those values after they are posted like so

$beer =($_POST['drink'][beer]== 'beer'? 'yes': 'no');
$milk =($_POST['drink'][milk]== 'milk'? 'yes': 'no');
$coffee = ($_POST['drink'][coffee]== 'coffee'? 'yes': 'no');
$tea = ($_POST['drink'][tea]== 'tea'? 'yes': 'no');

Now depending on whether the box was checked or not will determine the vallue assigned to all those short varaibles, either yes or no for each then just insert them into your database. To retrieve the values if the values in the database are yes then you would just echo

<input type='checkbox' name='drinks['beer']' value='beer' checked />

That should get you started.

dr_bung

slimjim wrote:
Yes but what about a radio or drop down or checbox, if a user goes to update his info, it needs to show what he has already set based on what is in database for his info. wouldnt make sence to have to add it all over again.
Getting values into textarea and input box is simple, but the others.. I cant figure it out.

selected value...


$options = array("option1", "option2");
print "
<form action=\"\" method=\"POST\">
 <select name=\"test\">
  <option value=\"\">Select One</option>";
for ($x = 0; $x < count($options); $x++) {
	print "<option value=\"".$options[$x]."\"";
	//this could be be something like 
	//$options[$x] == $row["my_db_value"]
	if ($options[$x] == $_POST["test"]) {
		print " selected ";	
	}
	print " > ".$options[$x]. "</option>";
}
print  "  

 </select> <input type=\"submit\" name=\"submit\" value=\"submit\"></form>
";