Newbie Question: Post vars are NULL

[Anon]

I have an HTML document with the following:

<form action="posttest.php" method="post">
Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br>
<input type="submit">
</form>

My PostTest.php file contains:
<?php
echo "$name";
?>

The problem is that the value of $name is always empty. What am I missing here.

Thanks!
Kevin

[[deleted]]

Maybe you have 'register_globals' set to 'off' in your php.ini?

[Anon]

You have not given any value to variable "name" after naming it like so:
<input type="text" name="name" VALUE="this value gets printed">

whoops !!

[[deleted]]

An input field does not require a default value.

Whoops!!

[Anon]

Then in WHAT ?? are you going to put the value to be printed on a form post?

Read the question again carefully.

[parena]

What're you talking about? If you press submit, you assign whatever you put in the textfield (that's what a textfield is for. In this case, a name) as the value to $name...

Whoops!

[[deleted]]

I think YOU should read the question again.

Kevin's problem is that $name is allways NULL.
He is NOT complaining that the field in his HTML form is empty.

Woops!

[Anon]

you may use register _globals function like in vincent post or use that instruction, before you use variable $name:

global $name;

regards

[[deleted]]

global $name;

will create a new global variable, or import an existing global var into the curreny scope.

This does not have the same effect as register_globals.
In fact, the 'global' function has got nothing to do with POST and GET vars at all.

[Anon]

Here is what I discovered:

My PHP.INI file defaults to globals = OFF.

After reading the following comment in the PHP.INI file

; - register_globals = Off
; Global variables are no longer registered for input data (POST, GET, cookies,
; environment and other server variables). Instead of using $foo, you must use
; $HTTP_POST_VARS["foo"], $HTTP_GET_VARS["foo"], $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS["foo"],
; $HTTP_ENV_VARS["foo"] or $HTTP_SERVER_VARS["foo"], depending on which kind

; of input source you're expecting 'foo' to come from.

I tried the changing the posttest.php code as follows:

<?php 
global $name;
echo "$name"; // empty.
?>

The above code still failed to display my POST value. However, the code below works:

<?php 
echo $HTTP_POST_VARS["name"]; //works!
?>

I perfer the $HTTP_POST_VARS method because it will work regardless of the value of globals in PHP.INI. Plus, it kind of self documents the source of the data.

I very much appreciate all of the replies.

Kevin