form within a form

drag0n

Hi:
I am trying to implement an AJAX uploader form within a form on my website. For example; I have a form to post an AD and in that form I use an ajax uploader class which creates another form inside the form like so:

<form name="post_add" method="post" action="process.php">
.... 
....
<tr>
<td>attachments</td>
<td>
<form id="formName1" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" action="imageupload.php?dirname=" target="iframe1">
    ....
    ....
</form></td></tr>
</form>

The attachment form does not work within the post_ad form; I have to close the first form first before I can implement the uploader.
What should I do? Should I use place the uploader outside of the form? But see the thing I want to do is first use the ajax uploader to temporary upload the file to a temp directory and when the user clicks submit on the form; then verify all the information and move the temp file from the temp folder to a real uploads folder. I can't do this if the uploader form is outside of the form being submitted; or can I?

sneakyimp

You can't have nested forms as far as I know. You'll either need to write some Javascript to extract values from the form manually OR you might create the uploader as a separate form and then use some CSS positioning to have it hover over the other form.

drag0n

Hm. So what would you suggust i do in my situation?
If I do make it another form; how should I pass the values about the uploaded files along with the form being submitted by the user?

sneakyimp

Just to warn you, if you allow someone to upload an image in a separate form, then you may have a bit of a problem if the user uploads an image and then just closes their browser. In this case, you will have a temporary uploaded image living somewhere and it will not be associated with any other data.

If this doesn't bother you, I would probably recommend putting an IFRAME in your page and put the file upload into a form in the IFRAME. This might even work inside the other form. That way, a user can submit the form in the iframe, which will result in a PHP page being loaded in the iframe. this PHP can contain javascript that will set some hidden input values in your main form based on what was submitted in the iframe.

djjjozsi

"how should I pass the values about the uploaded files along with the form being submitted by the user?"
session 🙂

open a pop-up site to upload the files, and store its data in session.

then you can make an ajax query, or just simple wait till the user submit the form,

and the problem has solved.

there are drag and drop file uploaders, you can easily insert into a form, and it makes with iframe.