Need Help Creating A Dynamic Form

Anon

I have an idea for a dynamic form which changes as the user continues to fill it out, and I'd like some advice on how to implement my idea. Basically I'd like to construct a dynamic form which reveals and hides extra input boxes depending on the user's answers to certain fields. For example, let's say I have a "Marital Status" question with radio buttons for "Single" and "Married". If the user selects "Married", I'd like to have a couple additional input boxes appear on the page that ask for the spouse's name and age. But I don't want any spouse fields to show up if the user checkmarks "Single". Is there any way to accomplish this? Currently I'm able to use DHTML to hide and reveal seperate forms on a page, but I can't figure out how to string together all the data from all the fields into one single submit button. Any suggestions or URLs of example forms which already do this type of thing are very much appreciated. Thanks!

Anon

You may wanna try includes for pulling the form off other pages this is quick idea. ex.

<p>Single
<input type=radio name=married value=single>
<p>Married
<input type=radio name=married value=yes>

if ($married == "married"):
include("married.php);
elseif ($married == "single"):
include("single.php);
endif;

pull the forms in based on this off other pages.

it may work haven't tried it but it is a idea.

Anon

Nope, this won't work, you can do something like this alright but only if you load a different page based on the answers filled out after the first form has been filled.
If you want different input boxes to appear as the form is filled out I'm pretty sure you need to use javascript. If anyone knows how to do this I'd appreciate it also 🙂

If you look at www.oki.com and do a search for drivers they have a form that does this but it's based on 2 forms and I can't figure out how to pass the values from all the forms to the recieving script.

Regards
Ciaran

Anon

Yeah I'm trying to do as much as possible with one single page because I already have 11 pages that make up the forms section that I'm working on and I don't want things to grow any larger! 🙂

Deme's solution might work if I reload that same page to process the input, but I'm trying to avoid that also.

Basically I'd like to create a form that works like those collapsable DHTML tree menus that I always see on different sites. Instead of having a menu that expands to reveal more menu options, I want to have a form that expands to reveal additional input boxes. My problem is that if I have an opening form tag at the top of the page and a closing form tag at the bottom of the page, only the initially visible input boxes show up. Any additional input boxes that are revealed appear as text, and not as a part of the initial form. I've solved this by wrapping up all of the hidden elements in their own form tags, but now I can't figure out a way to tie all of the individual forms on one page to a single submit button.

Thanks for the replies guys! I'll keep looking.

Anon

i think its not possible with php. I use javascript to do this...

The only thing I know how to do is say you have

Status: <select name="status">
<option value="married">married
<option value="single">single
</select>

Spouse: <input type="text" name="spouse" value="">

if the user chooses single, the text filed for spouse will say "Not applicable" if they choose married, the text field will say 'please enter full name'

I did see the use of javascript to add a box, but I dont' remember what site it was. Basically you would type in the form entirely in javascript. You would tell javascript to display the general forms. then depending on certain conditions, expand the page to put this form in...

Anon

If you want something to happen interactively on the client,
it can't be PHP. No problem having PHP include the
Javascript code to do this, of course, if that's the way
you decide to go.

Anon

I use GoLive to do the same thing. I show and hide floating boxes that contain fields.
I only use one form but I put the anchor of the floating box in the form. Then I can move the achual floating box where ever I want. I am still able to submit that data to to $php_self.