PHP Programming

By James N Hitz

Getting HTML-form data

PHP is smart! It scans the "calling" form and reads all the name and value attributes, it adds a dolar sign($) before every name and... Bingo! Ladies and Gentlemen, we have variables!

What?! It's that simple?

Yeah! It's that simple.

All names are converted into variables with the values of course assigned to their respective variables.

Consider the previous form. Supposing a certain user filled it thus:

Name: James Hitz(username)
Email: James@ncts.zzn.com(username)
Marital Status: single(Mstatus)

When the user hits the submit button (OK in our form), the PHP script specified in the action (/php-bin/person.php) is executed.

It automatically creates the following variables:

$username
$usermail
$Mstatus

Lets actually create the person.php script to thank the user for filing in the form.

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Thank you </TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H2>Thank you</H2>

<?php
	print "Thank you <B> $username</B> for your submission. ".
	      "Your submission indicates that you are $Mstatus and".
	      " your email address is <B>$username.";

?>
</BODY></HTML>

using the above data entry. the result will be:

Thank you

Thank you James Hitz for your submission. Your submission indicates that you are single and your email address is james@ncts.zzn.com

Challenge: What if the user doesn't enter data in the form but hits submit anyway? What then?

<< The Form's action | Form Validation >>

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