PHP page wont remember variables from form

amax

Hi All, I need to be able to update a page on my site e.g. news.php from a form called admin.php and would love your advice

I have the form created at admin.php that basically has 3 text areas. When the form is submitted the POST goes to news.php and within news.php I catch and echo the 3 variables e.g. $paragraph1= $_POST['paragraph1']; and echo $paragraph1

This works perfectly. However, when I refresh the news.php page again after the submit, the variables (i.e. my text from the form I submitted) resets, as if nothing was submitted at all. Can anyone advise me here on what I am doing wrong. I think perhaps I should be using something other than POST to catch? Should I be using a server or global variable so that if anyone submits the form, the variables remain on the news.php page for good until the form is re-submitted

dagon

Sounds like its working as i would expect it to. What are you using the variables posted to news for?

amax

Hi dagon, I am just using the echo'd variables as display. Its just a simple form that someone else can use to update the news headlines every now and again. Have you any idea why the variables are not remaining when I click away from news to some other page then return?

dagon

amax;10912757 wrote:
Hi dagon, I am just using the echo'd variables as display. Its just a simple form that someone else can use to update the news headlines every now and again. Have you any idea why the variables are not remaining when I click away from news to some other page then return?

Because that's how forms work. The variables only exist for that one user.

You need to store the form data in a db then retrieve it when some one visits the site

amax

Damm. I was hoping I could do this without the overhead of a database as it would only be changed occassionally, or even without writing the variable to a file. Is there any alternative to creating a database that you are aware of Dagon? I thought it was possible to make variables exist for all users when submitted?

dagon

database or flat file, no other options. If the change is infrequent, you could jsut edit the html file from time to time. We use to do that a lot in the old days :-)

amax

Database it is then Dagon. Thank you so much for all your help

shawty

Just for a quick alternitive to dragons suggestion, you could use the php functions

file_get_contents

and

file_put_contents

(the later is only available in PHP 5)

If you have a folder on your web server thats writable by the httpd process, then you can simply use file_put_contents in your post page where you display the data, then in the viewing page just use file_get_contents and print the returned string.

Both functions are well documented in the PHP manual.

Cheers

Shawty