Form Data

NZ_Kiwis

I'm populating a form based on another forms results, i.e the first form i'm asking for staff numbers, the second form has that many staff names boxes.

Name="StaffName_<?php echo $i; ?>

How can I check on the final page if that name Name="StaffName_4" has a value?

isset doesn't work like I need, empty? I don't know - I want it to be false if it does not hold a value and if it does i want to do a if statement match on the name value.

Help!!

NogDog

I'm not sure if this directly answers your question, but I'd recommend using the square bracket notation in the name attribute:

<input type="text" name="StaffName[<?php echo $i; ?>]" />

Then in the script that handles that form submission, you can simply loop on $POST['StaffName'] to find what has been entered:

foreach($_POST['StaffName'] as $value) {
   if(trim($value) === '') {
      echo "Hey! You didn't fill in one of those fields you asked for, idiot!";
   }
}

bradgrafelman

Also note that if the $i has no significance to you and is just a counter variable, you could also just use the name "StaffName[]" for the HTML form elements and let PHP auto-index the array that it will create.

BrightIdeas

I've always done my form field validation client side rather than server side. Just for the simple fact that in most cases, if it's done server side, the page will be reloaded and the visitor needs to start over again from scratch instead of being able to add only the missing information and move on. There's a myriad of js scripts you can easily use for that. the one I use most frequent:

function FormValidation() {
var a=document.forms["nameOfYourForm"]["nameOfTheFieldYouWantToValidate"].value
if (a==null || a=="")
  {
  alert("Please enter all the info I asked for.");
  return false;
  }

And in the <form> tag you just add onsubmit="return FormValidation()"

The only downfall with this one is that you need to write this for each form field you wish to validate. In large forms that can be cumbersome...

bradgrafelman

The problem with only validating via client-side scripts is that those scripts can be easily disabled or modified to bypass the validation altogether.

EDIT: Also, if you're just doing a simple "is not empty" check, you could just add a class name (or some other defining attribute) to the element(s) that are required and just have JS walk through every input element in the form with that attribute and perform the check.

BrightIdeas

You make a great point, bradgrafelman... I might have to rethink my strategy on that...