[RESOLVED] Please help with image as form button and then some

lelyea

I am in my 4th week of a PHP & MySQL class - no prior experience with either.
The problem I am having is relative to using an image as a form input button - I have two problems . . . Here are my lines of code:
echo '<input type="image" name=."$imgarray[2]". src="./images/'."$imgarray[2]";

  echo '"value=submit"';
  echo '"width="150" height="180" />';

First problem is no matter what syntax I use I get (viewing source of output page)
<input type="image" name=."$imgarray[2]". src="./images/vistainanutshell_t.jpg"value=submit""width="150" height="180" />

The code correctly inserts the name of the image at src=, but at name= it keeps giving the variable name itself rather than the required image name.

Second problem is that no value of any kind is being passed . .
Here is my form tag:
<form action="details.php" method="post" name="details">

Here is what I have at the beginning of my details.php script:
// create short variable names

$details=$_POST['details'];
$details= trim($details);
$details= trim($details);
if (!$details)
{
echo 'You have not entered search details. Please go back and try again.';
exit;
}
And, there is never $details - nada, zip - if there was something at all I could figure out what was wrong there. I have read that when using an image click coordinates are what is passed - but I'm getting nothing.

I am doing this same type of thing on the same page with radio buttons and it works great!

I'd really appreciate your help on this.

NogDog

You need to watch the way your single and double quotes balance out:

echo '<input type="image" name="'.$imgarray[2].'" src="./images/'.$imgarray[2].'"';
echo ' value="submit"';
echo ' width="150" height="180" />';

I sometimes find it easier to keep something like that straight by using the [man]printf[/man] or [man]sprintf[/man] functions:

printf(
   '<input type="image" name="%s" src="./images/%s" value="submit" width="150" height="180" />', 
   $imgarray[2],
   $imgarray[2]
);

lelyea

Thanks NogDog - That fixed the first part of my problem!!

NogDog

<form action="details.php" method="post" name="details">

I don't think you can pass post values via the form tag, only via an input, select, or textarea element within that form. For debugging purposes, you can see what is actually being passed from your form with the following debug code in your details.php script:

<?php
echo '<pre>' . print_r($_POST, TRUE) . "</pre>\n";
?>

lelyea

Ok - This line in my 'action' script
print_r($_POST)."<br />";
results in:
Array ( [hotspotnetworks_t_jpg_x] => 68 [hotspotnetworks_t_jpg_y] => 106 )
being passed. How do I catch that?
The part I really need is "hotspotnetworks_t". I need to put it in a variable.

Thanks

bradgrafelman

IE and FireFox submit these two differently. IIRC, IE will submit the x and y variables you see there. FireFox, however, also submits the original variable name with whatever value you specified. I may have gotten those browsers reversed, but I'm not sure. Either way, W3C standards say that you should not expect to see the original variable - only the x and y ones.

Since both will submit at least the x and y variables, you can simply check if one or the other was sent:

if(isset($_POST['hotspotnetworks_t_x']))

lelyea

It is clunky, but it works. In the next month I should be able to do something a bit better. (Remember, I am a student 4 weeks in to PHP.)
From:
print_r($_POST)."<br />";
results in:
Array ( [hotspotnetworks_t_jpg_x] => 68 [hotspotnetworks_t_jpg_y] => 106 )

I did this to catch something I could use:
if ($POST)
{
foreach ($POST as $key => $value)
{
if (strpos($key, 'x') !== false)
{
$explode = explode('x', $key);
$value= substr($explode[0], 0);
// echo "value=".$value;
break;
}
}

}

I do another mySQL query based on $value and it is good enough to get what I need for now. As a matter of fact, with a little chop to the end of the result to get rid of the x and replace the jpg with .jpg this solution would be perfect - because it works, right?

Thanks for the help!