How to save to a text file and....

[Anon]

What I have is a form that people fill out. It has more than one page to it with a lot of information. What I want to do is save the info from the first section of the form to a txt file, then when they move on to the next section and hit submit, it will add more information to the previous form.

I was told I could use sessions for this. I was thinking of not just having one txt file for all the info if multiple users are on. I was thinking of using the session ID as the name with the extension txt.

Another issue would be, how would I go about mailing this to a user....?

[Anon]

YOu can carry over the first page's values by echoing them in hidden form fields on the next page. So if form 1 has a text field called 'name', you could have a hidden form field on the next page called name which would simply echo what was entered into it (i.e. <?php echo $name; ?>

If you want to write to a text file after submitting the first page as well as the second, that's fine. As long as the same value exists (the one that determines the file's name) it'll all go in the same file. You may have to be careful about which page's submissions appear of at the top of that text file, however. Typically, the second page's info would be at the top of it, when I gather you'd want it the other way round.

I'm sure some more learned posters on here can offer more advice.

Cheers.

[Anon]

I somewhat get what you are saying about the hidden form fields, but I think I need a lil code or more of an explanation to get me off the ground.

[Anon]

Ray-

Let's say form 1 has form fields called 'name', 'email' and 'age'. As an example.

They're submitted to the next page and on that next page, as well as the rest of the form's form fields, you have hidden fields that are there only to store what was submitted on the first page.

So the second page will have hidden fields that look like this:

<input type="hidden" name="name" value="<?php echo $name; ?>">

<input type="hidden" name="email" value="<?php echo $email; ?>">

<input type="hidden" name="name" value="<?php echo $email; ?>">

It's a simplistic method but one which allows you to carry over the first page's values and submit them with everything else at the end via the hidden fields.

Hope this helps.

[Anon]

Sorry my mistake, the third of those hidden form fields should read:

<input type="hidden" name="age" value="<?php echo $age; ?>">

[Anon]

you could always use this to append to the bottom of the text file, but I think it would be best to pass the values all the way to the last page using hidden fields or sessions then if need be write to the txt file at the very end.

$fp = fopen ("sessionID.txt", "a");

hope this helps.

[Anon]

Alright, I get it....I have been outta the PHP programming circle for a few months now...my mind was blank...Thanx a lot.

[bastien]

you all realize this is just screaming for a DB. it'll cover everything...is simpler to use and mor flexible...

bastien

[Anon]

Andy got a good idea, but he forgot one thing... What happens if a user writes " or ' in a field and you echo that value in a hidden field ??

Example :

what do you like ? : [jello au "guili guili guili"]

If you echo that, simply, with no transformation...

<INPUT NAME="what_do_you_like" VALUE="jello au \guili guili guili\"" TYPE=HIDDEN>

The value parameter will be closed after the second " it will find, so value will be : jello au \

You also may have noticed the presence of \ : PHP automatically places \ before some specials characters such as " and '... What to do then ? This...

htmlentities(stripslahes($_POST["field_name"]));

Htmlentities() ? Replaces some characters with &...; ex :
< = &lt;

= &gt;
" = &quot;
é = &eacute;
etc.

Here is a complete example...

<INPUT NAME="name" VALUE="<?= htmlentities(stripslashes($_POST["name"]));" TYPE=HIDDEN>

$POST ? It's an array that contains all posted variables and their values. Use it instead of $variable_name... it's more secure. But if you request method is GET (I don't know why you would use it with a form), use $GET.

Where is the "echo" ? <?= is the same thing than <? echo

Hope it will help you.

[Anon]

<INPUT NAME="what_do_you_like" VALUE="jello au \guili guili guili\"" TYPE=HIDDEN>

should be :

<INPUT NAME="what_do_you_like" VALUE="jello au \"guili guili guili\"" TYPE=HIDDEN>

And I forgot to say that stripslashes() replaces \" to ", \' to ', etc.

[dalecosp]

Yeah, it probably is screaming for
a database, but for newbies, maybe
this is good advice.

I'd pass all variables to the last
page, using POST, and have the
receiving script do regex checks
on the input to make sure nothing
inappropriate was input. Very basic,
in most of the tutorials out there....

KDK