[RESOLVED] help! post form won't submit...

jycour

Hi everyone,

I have a form (post method) that contains a list of several options and the list itself, and I'm trying to retrieve the list with the selected option in the next page. I'ts working for the first submission but on further attempts the form won't submit. Any idea what would be the issue?

Thanks a lot !

Here's the code : (I'm using Chrome)

<?php

$list = $_POST['list'];
$check = $_POST['check'];
$year = $_POST['year'];

if ($check != 1) {
	$check = 1;
	$list = "
		<select name='year' onchange='document.myForm.submit()'>
			<option value='2000'>2000</option>
			<option value='2001'>2001</option>
			<option value='2002'>2002</option>
		</select>
		";	
}
else {	
	$replace = " selected='selected'";
	$by = "";
	$list = str_replace($replace,$by,$list);

$replace = $year . "'>";
$by = $year . "' selected='selected'>";
$list = str_replace($replace,$by,$list);
}

?>

<html>
<form name='myForm' action='form.php' method='post'>
	<?php 
		echo $list; 
		echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"list\" value=\"$list\">";
		echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"check\" value=\"$check\">";
	?>	
</form>
</html>

bradgrafelman

Your form contains no element named 'list', so this:

$list = $_POST['list'];

is always going to be NULL. Other than that, I would say you're going about this the wrong way.

There are various ways to pre-fill a form using previously POST'ed values. For example, for a <select> with static data, you could do something like:

<select name="foo">
    <option value="bar" <?php echo $_POST['foo'] != 'bar' ?: 'selected="selected"'; ?>>bar</option>
    <option value="baz" <?php echo $_POST['foo'] != 'baz' ?: 'selected="selected"'; ?>>baz</option>
</select>

Or, you could generate all of the HTML inside of the <select>...</select> tags using PHP:

<select name="foo">
<?php
foreach(array('bar', 'baz') as $optn)
    echo '<option value="$optn"' . ($_POST['foo'] != $optn ?: 'selected="selected"') . ">$optn</option>\n";
?>
</select>

jycour

Thanks for this quick answer!

There is an input named "list" in the code (at the end, hidden type): it's working fine on the first submission.

I had the feeling what I was doing was not very good 🙂 My problem with what you suggest is that the options of the list come from a mysql query that takes quite some time to run (large table). So I want to avoid running the query again by remembering the content of the whole list.

Thanks

bradgrafelman

EDIT: Since I forgot this in my first reply... Welcome to PHPBuilder!

jycour;11000453 wrote:
There is an input named "list" in the code (at the end, hidden type):

Hidden in plain sight... apparently I just can't read.

jycour;11000453 wrote:
the options of the list come from a mysql query that takes quite some time to run (large table).

Maybe the real problem is an improperly designed DB and/or lack of indexes?

jycour;11000453 wrote:
So I want to avoid running the query again by remembering the content of the whole list.

In that case, the first suggestion that comes to mind would be to store the (array?) of data you retrieve from MySQL and store it in a [man]session[/man]. Thus, when displaying the form, you'd first check if there is data in the session; if so, use it, and if not, execute the SQL query to retrieve the data and cache it in the session data. Although you still might need to address the issue of a stale cache (e.g. what happens if the DB data changes after you've cached it?).

jycour

ok, actually the problem was that $check becomes a 1 and I no longer have the submit on change.

jycour

thanks, I'll keep this session method in mind.

jycour

I was wrong! I got this message using the javascript console of chrome:

Refused to execute a JavaScript script. Source code of script found within request.

It's a security measure to prevent malicious code... I worked my way around it by replacing the javascript command by some random key word, once at the beginning and once at the end.

bradgrafelman

In other words, you used an unsupported workaround to bypass a security feature (thus decreasing security) rather than just doing it the right way? 😉