Help with getting a field, on another page, to populate

chrisj

In the templated video-website-php-script that I'm using, I've successfully added the 'Email Me' link
from one htm page(inner_play) to a new htm script page(inner_results).

I copied this code from the other page (inner_play.htm), to the new page:

<div id="member-details">
<div class="member-details-list">
<ul>
<li><a href="emailcompose.php?uid=[var.member_id]">[var.lang_email_me]</a></li>
</ul>

When the link is selected, from the inner_play page, the emailcompose.php page successfully appears, and the To: (Username) field is automatically populated with the user name (the user/uploader of the video that appears on the inner_play page).

But, even though my success in adding the link, to the NEW page, makes the emailcompose.php page appear, the
To: (Username) field doesn't automatically populate - (like it does when this link is selected from inner_play).
The field is just empty, and the browser just shows www...com/emailcompose.php?uid=

I'd like to get some help determining how to get the To: (Username) field to automatically populate (from the inner_results link). I've attached results.php, if you can take a peek and make a suggestion, any help will be appreciated.

results.txt

sneakyimp

HTTP is a stateless protocol. This means that information that is defined for one request to your server isn't necessarily available in the next request unless you take pains to pass that information along somehow.

In the file example you have given, your <A> tag defines your link like this:

<a href="emailcompose.php?uid=[var.member_id]">[var.lang_email_me]</a>

Obviously, this link points to emailcompose.php?uid=SOMETHING_OR_OTHER. Note the part of that link that follows the filename: ?uid=SOMETHING_OR_OTHER. This is called the query string and is a way to pass information into the php script emailcompose.php.

Within emailcompose.php, you can use the values supplied in the query string by looking at the superglobal variable $GET. You could try putting something like this in emailcompose.php:

var_dump($_GET);
die();

You can output the value you are supplying for uid in your code by doing this:

echo $_GET["uid"];

If this doesn't output anything then you haven't properly supplied a uid value in your query string.

Bottom line is that if you want to propagate some uid value from one page into emailcompose.php, then you have to make sure to supply the correct uid value in the page with the link in it and you have to make sure that emailcompose.php bothers to check $_GET["uid"] for the value.