Re: Form Design Advice

Overhead is not really the issue.

The real question is how to reuse the same page/script.
Let's say your script is form.php, accessed at www.mydomain.org/form.php

Your POST has to point to itself
<form method="post" action="form.php">

Set up a check system with two different states: check, process; the
default is check
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="check">

LOGIC
If action = check (always the case when form is submitted)
do error checking
if errors
display error messages
else action = process
if action = process
$x = 0
foreach ($form as $key => $val)
$field[$x] = $val[$x]
$x++
insert into table set $field[0] = $val[0], $field[1] = $val[0]...
foreach ($form as $key => $val)
echo $key : $val // display results
display form
Use the form field names to construct form values as an array
<input type="text" name="form[$fieldname]" value="">

The form is always displayed. Error messages and results both appear above
the form. Nothing is inserted until there are no errors.

Use PHP to validate the input.

> 1. display blank form
> 2. perform insert after data is submitted (assuming no
> errors which i check for)
> 3. perform select to get data entered
> 4. save data in global session array
> 5. redisplay the empty form (ready for new input) with
> the printed session array components (representing
> what was entered) above the form followed by "
> successfully entered."
>
> now that i've moved beyond filling in one column in
> one table, this seems to be an overhead hog -
> especially when multiple columns are entered into
> multiple tables.
>
> it's design decision time... am i being to picky by
> wanting to display the data without adding any extra
> button clicks?
>
> does anybody have a "cool green" way of getting this
> done?
>
> i'm thinking i can just do the data entry (and avoid
> the extra selects and session work) and include a
> button to include a user input variable number of most
> recent entries.
>
> tia...
>
>
>
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Ross Gohlke <-> http://GRINZ.com
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