colating info in a database

[radman08]

I am building a student application that will go online. I do not have the resources to pay someone to build it for me so I am learning as I go. I have my form built. It is 6 pages long with a final page to submit the form. The way I have it set up right now is I have a database that each pages content submits to. One of my problems right now is that each page starts a new line in my table so if I have one person with one username filling out the application all of his/her data will be spread out into 6 different fields inside my table. I want to have the entire form fill in one single line in my table not 6 or 7. How can I do that? I thought of using a session variable (ie username) to have all the data enter into the same place but I don't know how to do that. Is there a way? If not is there a way that each page submitted can post a session variable (ie username) so that when it comes time to collect and submit the info it will be easy to call all 6 pages into one place?

Second issue. When the application is finished I want, when the submit button is hit, to collect all of the info entered by the one applicant to all come into one place, be formatted and e-mailed to 2-3 e-mail addresses in neat order. How is that possible? I know it is because I have had someone say they can do it (for a price out of my budget). Any help would be good.

Thanks,
RADMAN08

[jkurrle]

Ok, Sessions aren't too hard. Basically, session variables are super variables that are retained throughout your web server session, from page to page. Here are the basics:

To use sessions, you need to do a session_start() at the top of your php page. To set a session variable "foo" equal to "bar" you could do the following:

session_start();
$_SESSION['foo'] = "bar";

At this point, session variable foo is available to you as long as you are at the site. In fact, I have seen cases where people can go to another site and come back to the original site and still have session variables still set, as long as they didn't close their browser. So, to reduce your security risks, you should always clear session data when you are done like this:

session_unset();
session_destroy();

session_unset clears all session variables, then session_destroy destroys the session. If you destroy the session without clearing the variables first, there is a possibility that someone could read them at a later date, as sessions are sometimes stored as cookies on a person's browser. Better safe than sorry.

How do we access session variable foo? By simply calling it through the $SESSION method.

echo "My name is " . $_SESSION['foo'] . "<br />";

So session variables are pretty easy to master. Using session variables in your case seems pretty much the way to go to keep data from page to page.

As far as formatting goes, you simply create a variable containing the entire mail message, formatted the way you want. Here's a short example:

$message="Application for " . $_SESSION['firstname'] . " " . $_SESSION['lastname'] . "\r\n
First Name: " . $_SESSION['firstname'] . "\r\n
Middle Initial: " . $_SESSION['middle_init'] . "\r\n
Last Name: " . $_SESSION['lastname'];

You will note that I am using the session variables outside the quote marks. I've personally had problems using them inside of quote marks for some reason, so I close the quote, then use a period (.) as a concatenation symbol, then the session variable, then a dot, then open another set of quotes, etc. \r\n are shorthand for carriage return and linefeed - you may not need them. When you complete the message, you finish it with a semicolon.

After that, you simply use whatever email function you are using and attach the message into the email.

That's pretty much it. Give it a shot and see if this works for you.