need help fixing online survey

kschmiddy

First, I am the newest of all newbies; I apologize for that.

I created the simplest of online surveys, just one question with a yes/no answer, and email-the-results functionality. (Though I do want to build a database to track the answers and # of voters etc.) When I click the "submit" button though, the browser tries to open process.php instead of just running the script...

Is this an easy fix?

Kudose

Post some code please.

bradgrafelman

Along with Kudose's request, you should consider the following points:

How was this .php file made? In Windows? If so, make sure you are viewing file extensions - otherwise the file is probably a plain text file called "process.php.txt".
Do any other PHP pages work? If you make a simple test.php that looks like this:
```
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
```
does it work?

kschmiddy

***THIS IS MY FIRST TIME CREATING AN ONLINE SURVEY. I'm really trying to figure it out best I can on my own without having to rely on your good graces (though I really appreciate your help!!)...I have done database management using MySQL, but not built anything from scratch. I guess the major question I have is how to connect the HTML to the PHP and the PHP to the MySQL database.

<form action="process.php" method="post">
<table border="1" bordercolor="#000000" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin-bottom: 5px;">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Should Uncle Ed run for Congress?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" align="center"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="Yes">Yes <input type="radio" name="answer" value="No">No</td>
</tr>

  </table>
  <input type="submit" value="submit" name="submit" />
</form>

PROCESS.PHP

<?php

// Get all $POST variables
foreach($POST as $var => $val)
{
${$var} = $val;
}

// Set up the email body
$body_body .= "Survey Results:\n";
$body_body .= " Should Uncle Ed run?--------| ".$recommend."\n";
$body_body .= "----------------------------------------------------\n";
$body_footer = "Survey Results provided as is from www.uncleedforcongress.com";

$to = 'Vote Watcher <votewatcher@uncleedforcongress.com>';
$subject = 'Uncle Ed Survey Results';
$body = $body_body.$body_footer;

mail($to, $subject, $body);

/
echo '<div style="white-space: pre">';
print_r(str_replace("\n", "<br />",$body));
echo '</div>';
/
?>

Kudose

kschmiddy wrote:
When I click the "submit" button though, the browser tries to open process.php instead of just running the script...

That's cause your form's action is process.php. So when someone clicks submit, the form posts it data there.

To post a script to itself, your action needs to be the same page that the script is on.

i.e. $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']

As for your most recent post: You can embed the PHP into the HTML whenever your heart pleases.

Here is a very basic script and has not been tested.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
  <head>
  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1250">
  <meta name="generator" content="PSPad editor, www.pspad.com">
  <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <?php
      /** Check to see if there has been a POST (submit has been clicked) **/
      if(isset($_POST['mySubmit']){
        /** Submit has been clicked -- connect to the database and insert **/
        /** THIS IS NOT SAFE -- ALWAYS(!!!) VERIFY INPUT FROM THE USER **/
        $stuff = $_POST['myInput'];

    /** Tis is how you can connect **/
    /** If you plan on using multiple links, databases, etc to the DB **/
    /** Then you would want to use the following commented out stuff **/
    //$dbh = mysql_connect('localhost', 'dbuser', 'dbpwd') or die(mysql_error());
    //$dbn = mysql_select_db('dbname', $dbh) or die(mysql_error());
    //mysql_query("INSERT INTO table (stuff) VALUES ('$stuff')", $dbn); 
    mysql_connect('localhost', 'dbuser', 'dbpwd') or die(mysql_error());
    mysql_select_db('dbname') or die(mysql_error());

    /** now you are connected and can do your inserts like you are used to **/
    mysql_query("INSERT INTO table (stuff) VALUES ('$stuff')");

  } else {
    /** Nothing has been posted, show the user the form **/
?>
<form name="myForm" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="POST">
  Input:&nbsp;<input type="text" size="12" maxlength="12" name="myInput" value="" />
  <br /><br /><input type="submit" anme="mySubmit" value="Submit" />
</form>
<?php
  } /** this ends our conditional **/    
?>
  </body>
</html>

kschmiddy

thanks so much for your help, I'm getting closer, I think to figuring this out...I've followed your suggestions, here is my code now (all in one index.php file):

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<title>Uncle Ed for Congress!</title>
<style type="text/css">

body {
background-image: url(UncleEd.jpg);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 865px;
height: 570px;
margin: auto;
}

#poll {
width: 250px;
position: absolute;
top: 405px; left: 510px;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
color: #000000;
font-size: 13px;
}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<?php
  /** Check to see if there has been a POST (submit has been clicked) **/
  if(isset($_POST['mySubmit'])
    /** Submit has been clicked -- connect to the database and insert **/
    /** THIS IS NOT SAFE -- ALWAYS(!!!) VERIFY INPUT FROM THE USER **/
    [COLOR=DarkRed]$stuff = $_POST['myInput'];[/COLOR]

    /** This is how you can connect **/
    mysql_connect('localhost', 'uncleed', 'edgar') or die(mysql_error());
    mysql_select_db('uncleed') or die(mysql_error());

    /** now you are connected and can do your inserts like you are used to **/
    mysql_query("INSERT INTO table (stuff) VALUES ('$stuff')");

  } else {
    /** Nothing has been posted, show the user the form **/
?>


<div id="poll" align="center">
<form name="edVotes" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="POST">
  <table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin-bottom: 5px;">
	<tr><td bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Should Uncle Ed run for Congress?</td></tr>
	<tr><td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" align="center">
		<input type="radio" name="answer" value="Yes">Yes      
		<input type="radio" name="answer" value="No">No</td></tr>
  </table>
<input type="submit" name="mySubmit" value="Submit" />
</form>
<?php
  } /** this ends our conditional **/    
?> 
</div>

</body>
</html>

I get the following errors...I think I fixed the first, the second though, I don't know what it means or how to fix it without messing with the other code:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '{' in /usr/home/uncleedforcongre/www/index.php on line 34

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /usr/home/uncleedforcongre/www/index.php on line 37 (in red above)

Kudose

if(isset($_POST['mySubmit'])
/** Submit has been clicked -- connect to the database and insert **/
/** THIS IS NOT SAFE -- ALWAYS(!!!) VERIFY INPUT FROM THE USER **/
$stuff = $_POST['myInput'];

/** This is how you can connect **/
mysql_connect('localhost', 'uncleed', 'edgar') or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db('uncleed') or die(mysql_error());

/** now you are connected and can do your inserts like you are used to **/
mysql_query("INSERT INTO table (stuff) VALUES ('$stuff')");

} else {

You are missing a closing parenthesis and opening brace.

Should be:

if(isset($_POST['mySubmit'])){
/** Submit has been clicked -- connect to the database and insert **/
/** THIS IS NOT SAFE -- ALWAYS(!!!) VERIFY INPUT FROM THE USER **/
$stuff = $_POST['myInput'];

/** This is how you can connect **/
mysql_connect('localhost', 'uncleed', 'edgar') or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db('uncleed') or die(mysql_error());

/** now you are connected and can do your inserts like you are used to **/
mysql_query("INSERT INTO table (stuff) VALUES ('$stuff')");

} else {