Form validation

[Anon]

I'm not sure whether this is even possible or not....

I'm using the php ODBC commands in order to retrieve stock balances for our products.

I've managed this with no problems. What I want to do is validate against each retrieved balance i.e. let the user place an order using a regular form but not let them exceed what's available.

Is there any way to retrieve info and have a corresponding variable for each distinct field?

Thanks

Chris

[[deleted]]

So basically you want to know how to:
- Print a form and let the user fill it and submit it
- Read the form data into PHP.
- See which items have been selected and with what amounts.
- Look up the requested items and the available amount in the database.
- Compare the requested amount with the avaliable amount.
- Print an error message where the requested amount exceeds the available amount.

[Anon]

Pretty much so Vincent - looks like you put it better than me though!

• Print a form and let the user fill it and submit it

On this part I'd really like to display the available amount next to the empty form field. That way, the customer can ask for a sensible amount. I've been thinking Javascript up to this point (i.e. get available quantity over as a variable do I can validate at the client) because I'm fairly new to PHP (I'm using Apache/php4 on NT4, connection to MSSQL 2000).

All my work up to this point has been very enquiry based e.g. I've been using the odbc_result_all function to return the result into a table.

Chris

[[deleted]]

If you have a dropdown box where people can select the item they want to order, you could append the available amount in the dropdownbox:

bananas - 5
apples - 14
pears - 134

Otherwise you'd have to use things like "onChange"
to print the true available amount next to the input box.
Doable but tricky.

[Anon]

Thanks Vincent - I'll give the first option a go I think.

Do you know whether I can validate against this appended amount? I.e can I get it back as a different variable.

Is there a standard function for returning data into a html form? (like the odbc_result_all returns the values into a html table).

Chris