Forms

NZ_Kiwis

I have a "booking form" I need to create. I believe i'm going to have 3-4 steps in the process.

I want to ensure users can navigate back and forward through my "forms" to update date or change preferences. How can I do this?

Step1: "Updating Cart"
Step 2: Adding personal details"
Step 3: Reconfirm and add address details"
Step 4: Receive booking number

I may want to go from step 3 back to step 2 but how can I keep my data again, how can I clear the data if a user leaves this process and starts again or completes the booking form to do another form?

I know some professional websites do a great job at this but standard HTML forms are messy and i don't want to have to "refresh" the page if I go back from step 3 to step 2 to see my data if it's stored in sessions

laserlight

Once the form data has been validated, store it in the session. When the booking is completed, clear the form data. You can record the timestamp of the last update of the form data, and thus determine if the form data should be cleared when the user returns to the form before completing the process, or if the form should be automatically filled with the previously submitted data.

NZ_Kiwis

I've done this before but found that when you went to another page you had to refresh to the data to get the session to show

Also if you refresh the page you are on it submits the data again, how can I get around this?

laserlight

NZ_Kiwis wrote:
I've done this before but found that when you went to another page you had to refresh to the data to get the session to show

Why would you need to do that? In the case of a form wizard, I would not expect you to show the data from page #1 in page #2. You might show all the data as a final confirmation step on the last page, but by then all the data already validated would be stored in the session.

NZ_Kiwis wrote:
Also if you refresh the page you are on it submits the data again, how can I get around this?

After you have validated the form data submitted, redirect the user to the next form wizard page.

NZ_Kiwis

laserlight, I don't think you understand my issues

1: If I user wants to back and forth I want the already submitted data to show. If I don't allow this to happen the user will try by user the back button anyhow so I might as well make this easy for them.
2: If a user goes back to a already submitted page the SESSION data does not always show - I sometimes need to refresh the page.

I think the answer might be to have one page bookingpage.php and from that i'll call 3 or 4 sub pages via ajax

johanafm

I believe that you don't understand Laserlight, rather than the other way around.

If there is SESSION data, use that to populate controls and preselect options in select elemetns etc.
If a user goes back, your problem is allready solved: see 1.

I'm talking about a multiform/multipage setup without use of ajax, where each page posts back to itself and if everything is ok, redirects to the next page in the set, just as suggested by laserlight.

If your users are using javascript, then by all means use ajax if it makes it easier for you. But if you can't get the above to work without ajax, then I'd say you really should learn how to do it. First off, it's not hard to do, so simply the chance of learning how things work is always a good idea. Secondly, to be able to make a decision on wether one thing or the other really is easier, you'd have to know how both work.

NZ_Kiwis

Yeah I believe I get what he is saying like this, however if I click a link to bookingformpage1.php or use the back button the value in T1 does not show unless I refresh the page. If I go back from bookingformpage2.php it will go back to submit.php then forward again.

Would no caching fix this issue?

bookingformpage1.php

<form method="POST" action="submit.php">
<input type="text" name="T1" size="20" value="<?php if(!isset($_SESSION['T1']) { echo $_SESSION['T1']; } ?>>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="B1">
</form>

submit.php

$_SESSION['T1'] == $_POST['T1'];
header("LOCATION: bookingformpage2.php");

NZ_Kiwis

plus, wont most users have javascript enabled? is there a code which can detect if it's not and alert the user?

Weedpacket

NZ_Kiwis wrote:
is there a code which can detect if it's not and alert the user?

Like this?

www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/scripts.html#edef-NOSCRIPT

johanafm

NZ_Kiwis;11014357 wrote:
Would no caching fix this issue?

I'd start by fixing the coding issues and errors and see if that has any effect. But by all means, check what cache headers are set, and try changing them to see what happens. Just be aware of a few things
1. Do use http headers. Some browsers might respect meta, but I don't believe any proxy ever will since they have no reason to inspect the content sent.
2. If you have any kind of private information which for example is served based on session information after a login, the same URL might give you and me different inforamtion. If this is the case, you can not allow proxies to cache anything. Otherwise my information may leak to other users, and their information might leak to me.

But if you want to be certain nothing is cached, the following cache headers should be set
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0

In particular, the no-store directive might be of interest here, since there is a difference between serving stored content from a previously visited page as that page is revisted and serving cached content when that same page is requested a second time. That is, the store is intended to be used for revisits in history, while a new request to a previously visited page would not use the store.

NZ_Kiwis;11014357 wrote:
bookingformpage1.php
if(!isset($_SESSION['T1']) { echo $_SESSION['T1']; }

Do you have error reporting turned on? Including notices? This should either show nothing at all or show nothing at all along with an E_NOTICE.

NZ_Kiwis;11014357 wrote:
submit.php
$_SESSION['T1'] == $_POST['T1'];

Are you aware that this statement does nothing at all. Or to be more precise, that statement has no side effect. Thus, the state of your application is exactly the same before and after that line is executed. So wether you execute that line or not doesn't matter, except that it does take the tiniest amount of time to have it there.