radio box selection problems

noobyphpchick

Help
i have no idea whats going on with this stoooopid thing! i am soo frustrated!
i have gender radio buttons which look like this

<label for="gender">Gender:</label>
<input type="radio" name="gender" value="male" <?=($gender == 'male' ? 'checked' : ''); ?> >male
<input type="radio" name="gender" value="female" <?=($gender == 'female' ? 'checked' : ''); ?> >female
<font size="2" color="red"><?php print "$gendermessage" ?></font><p>

i then have a little validation code above the html which goes like this

if (empty($POST['gender']) || ($POST['gender'] != "male" && $_POST['gender'] != "female"))
{
$gendermessage = "Please enter a gender ";
$errors ++;

the problem is when i click female and print $gender after submit it prints female even if i pressed male.
when i click submit and the page is caught by another field the radio button does not stay empty or at the box which was previously chosen it snaps to female!

consequently i cannot distinguish between male and female which means none of my application works 🙁
i'm totally baffled- i know i've been asking alot but does anyone know why this is happening?
in much desperation
VERYnoobyphpchick😉

YAOMK

Do not use short tags to define php code. I'm not sure why it is snapping to the female radio button. But here is how in my view your field should look like:

<form name="form" action="form.php" method="post">
<input type="radio" name="gender" value="male" <?php  $_POST['gender']=='male'?$checked='checked':$checked=null; echo $checked?> >male
<input type="submit" value="Enter">
</form>

A good way to debug your scripts is to view what the actual source of the html generated page looks like, in your browser window just click to view its source.

noobyphpchick

Thankyou so much for the code, it worked wonderfully and i tried looking in the source and found why it was snapping to female- i'm rather embarrassed to say but i had declared $gender = "female"; !!! it was lost in a stack of variables so i missed it- still no excuse for such a sloppy mistake which caused so much sleep loss!
my project is finished now and it works wonderfully i am very pleased- on with project 2🙂
Thanks again for helping.

YAOMK

Glad you found the error, don't hesitate to post if anything else comes up. Bye for now.