change form textarea content with links

gameznet

I have a form with a textarea providing a block of html code to the user.
Basically its a form for a petshop which updates a mysql database with available puppies to be displayed on their website.
The "init value" of the textarea contains a block of html code serving as a template which they edit with a "new Puppy"

They have 6 stores and each entry needs to have the particular stores details included.

I want the users of the form to be able to click a link and the init val is then changed for that particular store (to save them repeat typing store details)

So Above the text area I need to provide several links to change the block of code
displaying in the text area so that their template only needs minor editing of puppy particulars eg:
Click link to select your store:
Location1 Location2 Location3 Location4 Location5 Location6

I have tried using onClick="document.getElementById
which works for simple text but not for a block of html code

can anyone help me

Pikachu2000

Assuming the user has to log in somehow, associate their location with their user information. If that is impossible or logistically impractical, you can use a radio button array, or select instead of having it typed out in the textarea.

gameznet

Thanks for the reply,
please forgive me as I am helping out the owners of the pet chain and I am no programmer, I just fumble through and somehow usually get where I need to go.

Actually they are all using the same login at the moment but providing seperate logins would be more sensible and ideal as it will also solve concurrent user issues which havent happened yet since only one person has been entering data but will become a problem in the future when each store is updating the information.

so yes your sugesting is a good one but how could I :
1) ensure that when user A is logged in that another user cannot log in and begin editing and cause issues with concurreny, maybe a statement that "User A is currently logged in please come back later" .
2) code it so that their store info is used for the init value on that particular textarea

any help is very much apreciated

gameznet

This is a favor thing I am doing for my boss who own the Pet store chain, Im not getting paid for it so I just quickly knocked up a simple admin area for them because they are using oscommerce and the admin area of that was way too mind boggling for them.
trouble is when they all start using it we are going to run into issues if more than one person logs in at the same time.
so I could use some help to
1) create seperate logins for all 6 stores
2) make sure no issues if more than one person is logged in at the same time
3) have that particular text area populated automatically with a logged in stores particulars

Pikachu2000

Frankly, I've never been faced with an issue regarding concurrent user problems, so I'm probably not the best person to answer that question, but some things come to mind. If each puppy has a registration, or other unique identifying number, that could be a mandatory field and checked for duplicates. Beyond that, I can't offer much without knowing more details.

As far as using the user's location as an initial value, all it would take would be to have the information associated with their other information in the database, and retrieve it when necessary. One consideration to make would be whether the store has users who may work at more than one of the locations. If that's the case, other methods would need to be used as well.

I suppose it would also be possible to have one specific login to be used only for inventory entry at each store, if the ability to track who made a particular entry isn't a concern.

gameznet

I have now set up seperate logins for each store so it won't matter who at the store is doing the entry.

I can get help for concurrency issues later but for now I would like to get this textarea populated with the logged in stores details as you sugested.

I am thinking that I could use php include to call a file containing a different textarea "for each logged in store" depending on which store is logged in?

I dont know how I would do that so if you can offer any sugestions or provide some example code that would be great.
I am guessing I would need to use a cookie but not sure where to start,

Pikachu2000

It's hard to make any specific suggestions without knowing more details regarding the information stored in the database for login. I don't know anything about the way oscommerce is structured but I'd have to imagine each location already has its own entry in there somewhere, so it should be just a matter of retrieving and formatting the record associated with the location making the inventory adjustment, possibly by setting that location's id or login in a $_SESSION var on login.

gameznet

Basically I am building a simple admin area for them from scratch.
These users entering puppies are not involved in the rest of the site, they purely enter individual animals such as puppies but on a pretty much daily basis and somtimes they have to enter 10 or so puppies. As they do this they have to retype the same store information in 1 particular textarea over and over again for every new animal they add.

the admin area I created for them is just a password protected directory using .htacess and .htpassword with very limited controls over data. The directory was created and protected using features found in cpanel and it is not connected to the actual oscommerce site other than it does enter some data into the product related tables.

With livestock such as puppies there are no inventory or stock controls, no online buying options, customers have to go to the particular store to buy the puppy because each puppy is unique and once sold it is deleted from the database.

Basically the staff log into this "simple admin area" to enter a new puppy and to remove them once sold and that is all there is for them to do.
So there are only a couple of options to "add Puppy" "edit Puppy" or "Delete Puppy".

When they login and click "Add Puppy"
the script simply ads a new product to the inventory with a product_id
so in step1 a table in the oscommerce database called products_to_categories gets a new entry
eg
table: products_to_categories
this has 2 columns/fields only
prod_id cat_id

they click submit and that table is updated and they are taken to another page for step2.php where they enter some information that goes into the second table called products
this has things like prod_id, price, product_title, product_image etc
they click submit and go to step3.php

Because oscommere is not set up for multiple locations there is no information on the different stores contained in the database or the frontend store.

So now on step 3 they enter information into the 3rd table called products_description which contains only a single textarea for the puppies description and since it is the only place that can tell a "customer" which store the puppy can be found at, All the information must be supplied that is submitted to a single field in the products_description table. This has to be a block of html code because straight text comes out in the shopping cart as a block of text with no formating or links.

The issue I have is to make it easy for them to quickly get that textarea filled in
so It needs to contain a prewritten html template with relevent store information so they simply edit the prefilled textarea with a few details for the new puppy and not have to edit the template with the store location,phone number, link to map etc
there is just one field here which is why I was first trying to have a link for say "store1" which when clicked will change the prefilled textarea containing generic html code to better reflect store1 or store2 etc

If necesary I can set up a php login rather than the simple .htpassword protected directory and use cookies or a session and create a new table in the database for this purpose whcih can hold any necesary information but I dont know how to go about making this simple because its a single field being edited so as far as I know all of the info would have to go into one field rather than seperate fields in a database table anyway.

Your sugestion to have the textarea get autofilled depending on which store is "entering the new puppy" is great but means that there has to be some kind of dynamic "textarea" in step3 that is loaded in the form depending on which store is logged in. It seems logical to me to have somthing that basically says If user A is logged in then include textarea A else if user B is logged in include textarea B

Hope that makes sense, sorry for the long post, just trying to give as much info as I can..

Pikachu2000

OK, that makes more sense now.

Probably the best way to handle it would be add a table to the db with each location's details, then retrieve it based on the login information and include it in or concatenate it with the description. The easiest way, although it still relies on some form of user input would be to populate a drop-down <select> field with the locations, then include the value="" portion of that with the text description (or query the db for it based on the value). The first way is less prone to user errors, but requires a little more coding.