Dynamic calculations on a form

westie101

Greetings.

I have an issue that as yet I cannot address in my limited skills of php scripting. The issue surrounds a form/script that I created. It is to be used as an ordering form for a friend's small enterprise, and is a simple quantity/total script. As it stands, the script gathers the values, multiplies the quantity that you enter by the value per unit and submits the whole thing via e-mail.
That part of the script I made and found fairly easy.
The problem that I am having is where the user of the form enters a quantity, I would like that total to be reflected in a total cost per item (quantity*unit cost) and I need this to be displayed as the user enters the quantity so they can see how much they are spending.

Is this possible without attaching a sql database to it? (I know even less about sql)

Yours hopefully,

Westie

alimadzi

Sure. Just use JavaScript. No database required.

bradgrafelman

Or, since Javascript is unreliable, you can submit the data to a confirmation page, multiply the values, and display the total amount. You could store the quantity and all of that in hidden form fields, so that when they confirm the final amount you'll still get all of those details in the e-mail.

alimadzi

bradgrafelman wrote:
Or, since Javascript is unreliable, you can submit the data to a confirmation page, multiply the values, and display the total amount. You could store the quantity and all of that in hidden form fields, so that when they confirm the final amount you'll still get all of those details in the e-mail.

He did say "...as the user enters the quantity...", so I assumed he wanted it in real-time. JavaScript is unreliable, yes. Some people turn it off. Just seemed to be the solution that fit his requirements.

He could, of course, do both. JavaScript for real-time totaling and a PHP script as a backup that calculates their total before checkout.