retain form selection across pages

leighly9

Hi, I have developed an interactive buyers guide that allows users to filter through a set of products based on answers to questions presented as drop-down selections.

Go to http://www.buyersguide.com/WrinkleCreams for a working proto type.

Once the user selects one of the products, they are redirected to a product detail page.

The form used to filter the product selection is on this page too, but the selected drop down values are lost when the user links to the product detail page.

I want to retain these values since once the user filters their product set, it is likely they will want to review multiple products in the set. I don't want them to have to refilter the result set.

I'm not sure how to approach a solution. My initial research indicates that I will need to use php sessions, but my initial attempts to implement have not worked. I'm not sure if I'm implementing incorrectly, or if this isn't the right approach.

Can someone give me guidance on how to approach this? Are sessions the right direction or are their alternatives?

Thanks!
CD

Kudose

Sessions would probably be the best bet. You'll need to be sure to start the session on every page and be sure to start them before sending any content to the browser (i.e. using echo).

If you post your code I am sure someone here or I can help you.

djjjozsi

hello,

this is a good example how to make ajax list elements
http://php-ajax-code.blogspot.com/2007/07/ajax-triple-dropdown-with-states-cities.html
The only change you must do, is in the first case you put your dropdown lists for the filtering,
and on change you sent all the variables to the form maker php,
to print these forms with the selected data, storing them into session.
And if the user refresh the page, she/he will get the original lists with the selections.
And that php will generate the products listing of course.
And this is works with post as well..

leighly9;10891639 wrote:
Hi, I have developed an interactive buyers guide that allows users to filter through a set of products based on answers to questions presented as drop-down selections.

Go to http://www.buyersguide.com/WrinkleCreams for a working proto type.

Once the user selects one of the products, they are redirected to a product detail page.

The form used to filter the product selection is on this page too, but the selected drop down values are lost when the user links to the product detail page.

I want to retain these values since once the user filters their product set, it is likely they will want to review multiple products in the set. I don't want them to have to refilter the result set.

I'm not sure how to approach a solution. My initial research indicates that I will need to use php sessions, but my initial attempts to implement have not worked. I'm not sure if I'm implementing incorrectly, or if this isn't the right approach.

Can someone give me guidance on how to approach this? Are sessions the right direction or are their alternatives?

Thanks!
CD