[RESOLVED] Saving Form Data to Database before Redirecting

[Good2CU]

I have this html code that is a search box, that goes to an external site. One way or another, I'd like to be able to log the queries people search for in my database. I was thinking of having a separate form, going to my script that would then re-direct to the site below. I don't know if this is possible with Post forms though.

<form name="host" target="_blank" action="http://www.domain.com" method=POST>
<input type=hidden name=specialID value="1350">
<input type=hidden name=userID value="229818">
<input type=hidden name=merchantID value="13326">
<input type=hidden name=afftrack value="">
<input name="stringtofind" type="text" id="stringtofind" size="25">
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Search">
</form>

Thanks in advance.

[leatherback]

When I see things like merchant ID, I am thinking.. Maybe this is information you do not really want to share with the rest of the worl. Have you considered using [man]CURL[/man] to handle this?

It allows you to process the info on your server. Call the remote server and retrieve their response.

[Good2CU]

I've never used CURL, it sounds a little beyond my skills, and off-hand, that also doesn't sound like what I'm looking for.

I found this from searching on Google, which does what I want, I was just hoping not to use JavaScript. Another draw back is, that the intermediate page is noticably visisble for about a second, whereas with the php header() redirects it's much less noticible.

function SubmitForm($FormName) {
//JavaScript function to submit a form programmatically
//$FormName must be form´s name (as specified in the opening form tag)

echo '<script language="javascript">document.'.$FormName.'.submit()</script>';
}

SubmitForm('formname');

Does anyone now how to replicate the JavaScript functionality in PHP?

Thanks.

[bradgrafelman]

Good2CU wrote:

Does anyone now how to replicate the JavaScript functionality in PHP?

No, because PHP doesn't know what a "form" is, let alone how to submit one.

It can, however, POST data to a URL (e.g. using [man]cURL[/man] as suggested above).

[Good2CU]

About how many lines of code do you think this would be with cURL?

I'm probably not going to attempt it now, but I'll keep it in mind for the future.

Thanks.

[bradgrafelman]

shrug I've never been one to count lines... I just look at functionality. You can check out the examples on the manual page for [man]curl_setopt/man - they basically hand you the code that POST's data to another URL, you just have to customize it a bit for your own situation.