Multi-step forms

Anon

What function or process would one use to make a form that's dynamic and multi-step.

For instance, a user enters their first name, last name, and then are asked how many candy bars do they want.

They hit "Next" (a submit button) and the form will list X amount of fields for the user to enter a candy bar name depending on how many candy bars they selected in the previous step.

Just an example of what I'm trying to get at, all this infomation must be stored somehwere. Would you post the information to a completely new script or post to itself? You wouldn't use cookies because that's only limited to 20 cookies per domain.

I suppose you could store the information temporarily in a file, have the script recall it, and then remove it when it's done; but there has to be an easier way to do a multi-part/multi-step (step 1 out of 4 or whatever) form...

Any ideas? Can someone lead me in the right direction here? Thanks.

Anon

Just a better way of explaining what I am getting at:

Say you have a quiz, five questions, but you only want 1 question per page. How would you go about that. Do you post to the same script or to a new one each time, does the information get stored in a file or are the variables always there? No use of cookies allowed tho.

Anon

There are lots of ways.

You could use sessions, cookies, or accumulate hidden inputs for each step. Each page adds all the vars posted to it as indivis=dual hidden inputs. For example, your second page should look like this:

<FORM method=post action="page3.php">
<?
foreach ($HTTP_POST_VARS as $key => $val)
echo '<INPUT type="hidden" name="'.$key.'" value="'.$val.'">'."\n";
?>
Insert your new inputs here.

Anon

Ah thank you! That was exactly what I was looking for 🙂

I think an easier way to do that is like this though:

if ($HTTP_POST_VARS) {
while (list($lvar, $lval) = each($HTTP_POST_VARS)) {
if (ereg("^CONT_", $lvar, $throw) > 0) {
echo "<input typ=hidden name='$lvar' value='$lval'>\n";
}
}
}

Thanks for the help, greatly appreciated 🙂

Anon

You could also use sessions.