<<<_HTML_ form input value from PHP $defaults array

alpha_martinez

Hi there, I'm new to PHP and have encountered a problem populating the default value for an input box in my php form.

I print the form from php using <<<HTML, in the First Name input box as the value I point / would like to pint the value to the array $defaults which contains 'fname' => 'Default Name', but I can't figure out how to do it right since I'm doing it from the <<<HTML code.

Thank you!

    print<<<_HTML_
    <form method="post" action="$_SERVER[PHP_SELF]">
    	First Name : <input type="text" name="fname" value="'<php? $defaults['fname'] ?>'"><br />
        Last Name : <input type="text" name="lname" value="">               

    <br>

    Telephone : <input type="text" name="phone"><br>
    Email Add : <input type="text" name="email"><br>

   </form>
_HTML_;

MOD EDIT: [noparse]

..

[/noparse] bbcode tags added; please use these in the future when posting PHP code.

NogDog

Presumably you are already within a <?php...?> block when you are doing the print() command, so there should be no need to have <?php tags within the text. However, a good practice is to use "complex" (curly brace) variable notation when using array elements so that the parser does not get confused:

    print<<<_HTML_
    <form method="post" action="{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}">
        First Name : <input type="text" name="fname" value="{$defaults['fname']}"><br />
        Last Name : <input type="text" name="lname" value="">               

    <br>

    Telephone : <input type="text" name="phone"><br>
    Email Add : <input type="text" name="email"><br>

   </form>
_HTML_;

alpha_martinez

Thanks for the quick reply.

I tried that , but it didn't work.

In my contact.php page I have all code as functions. This is what triggers the functions;
The _submit_check is a hidden input value that simply tells me if form was submitted in case submit button was not clicked and form was sent via the return key.

if ($POST['submit_check']) {
// If validate_form( ) returns errors, pass them to show_form( )
$defaults = $_POST;
if ($form_errors = validate_form( )) {
show_form($form_errors);

} else {    	    
    process_form( );
}

} else {
$defaults = array('fname' => 'FirstName',
'lname' => 'LaststName',

'phone' => 'PhoneNo',

'city' => 'CityName',
'city_states' => array('CA','MI','WA','OH','MA'),

);

show_form( );

before your suggestion to use the curly braces I was trying to get the value using ; value="' . htmlentities($defaults['my_name']). '" as suggested in a book I'm reading, but this just makes the page go blank when I hit preview in my php editor (coda panic).