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Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:54 am

hey there. i am reading the book PHP for the world wide web 2nd edition by Larry Ullman and i am just getting to chapter 5. I have been able to read and understand and actually testing everything so far, but i have a question "maybe i still need to read more of the book for it,but i wanted to ask first".
Lets say i create a submition table, like i did following the book. i created handle_form.php and feedback. But when i go and fill the form, and i hit submit, it goes well and gives me the message from handle_form with submited details. But how to i get visitors to send me feedback and where does it go ??

Thanks guys,

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:35 pm

Usually, when you create the form with <form action="your_script.php" method="post">, then your input is sent to the $_POST array in PHP. If you create it with method="get", therefore, it's in the $_GET array. The indices of both arrays are the values you have given by the name attribute in the input tag. E.g.

<form method="post" action="script.php">
<input name="textbox" type="text" />
<input name="btn" type="submit" value="Submit this form!" />
</form>

then the values of the textbox are written to $_POST["textbox"] when you click the submit button, and $_POST["btn"] is "Submit this form!".

For more information see the PHP manual at http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.external.php . The PHP manual there is the official one and it can help you in most cases.

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 5:02 pm

thanks for that.
i am new to this still, how do i get to $_POST["textbox"] ?
i uploaded this files to my web server.

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:41 am

$_POST is a variable that's auto-created for you. Just do this:

<?php

$myTextboxContents = $_POST['textbox'];
echo $myTextboxContents;

?>

As rohieb said, see the docs.

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:46 pm

i have read it a few contents, i just am a lil confused right now. this code u gave me :
<?php

$myTextboxContents = $_POST['textbox'];
echo $myTextboxContents;

?>
do i manualy type it to my handle_post so i can see the posts sent ?
thanks again

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 5:32 pm

I'm not sure what handle_post is, as that's the first time you've mentioned it. Here's the deal. Say you have a form, perhaps the one roheib created, inside the file MyForm.html:

File MyForm.html:

Code:

Note that action attribute on the form field; that tells the browser where to send the form data when it's submitted. The method attribute tells the browser *how* to send the data; in this case, it's via POST. So you create the action file like so:

File MyForm_action.php:

Code:

So when the user submits the form on MyForm.html, the browser sends the form data to MyForm_action.php via POST. The little PHP script then pulls the data from the $_POST variable (which is where all form POST data is automatically deposited for you) and prints it out.

Hope this helps.

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:25 pm

this is the feedback :

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Feedback Form</title>
</head>
<body>
Please complete this form to submit your feedback: <br />

<form action="handle_form.php"method="post">

Mr. <input type="radio" name="title" value="Mr." />
Mrs. <input type="radio" name="title" value="Mrs." />
Ms. <input type="radio" name="title" value="Ms." />
<br />
Name: <input type="text" name="name" size="20" />
<br />
Email Address: <input type="text" name="email" size="20" />
<br />
Response: <select name="response">
<option value="excellent">This is excellent.</option>
<option value="okay">This is okay.</option>
<option value="boring">This is boring.</option>
</select>
<br />
Comments: <textarea name="comments" rows="3" cols="30"></textarea>
<br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Send My Feedback" />

</form>


</body>
</html>

and this is the handle_post

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Your Forum Posting</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php // Script 5.7 - handle_post.php

// Address error handing.
ini_set ('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting (E_ALL & ~ E_NOTICE);

//In case register_globals is disabled.
$first_name = trim ($_POST['first_name']);
$last_name = trim ($_POST['last_name']);
$posting = trim ($_POST['posting']);

// Create a name variable.
$name = $first_name . ' ' . $last_name;
$name = stripslashes ($name);
$posting = stripslashes ($posting);
// Take out the bad words.
$posting = str_replace ('.', 'XXXX', $posting);

// Change the capitalization of the name.
$name = ucwords (strtolower($name) );

// Print the message.
print "Thank you, $name, for your posting:<br />
<p>$posting</p>
<p>$post1</p>
<p>$post2</p>
";

// make a link to another page.
$email = urlencode ($name);
$email = urlencode ($_POST['email']);
print "Click <a href=\"thanks.php? name=$name&email=$email\">here</a> to continue.";

?>
</body>
</html>

i want to have the feedback sent to my email or to another page where i can read what people sent me.

thanks again

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:41 pm

ok, here's a little bit more detailed. i also tried the code u gave me.

this is the feedback

Please complete this form to submit your posting:

First Name: luis
Last Name: martins
Email Address: whatever@yahoo.com
Posting: this is a test.

i click post

and it goes to different page :

Thank you, Luis Martins, for your posting:

this is just a test.

Click here to continue.

and i click here and takes me to the last page :

Thank you, Luis Martins. We will contact you at the email given email@yahoo.com.

Now the thing is, where does the feedback go to? how do i go to receive them ?
i am sorry if i am a pain , its just that i want to move on reading the rest of the book and without knowing this little thing i cant.

thanks again

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:43 am

Right now, it's not going anywhere. You're just pulling the information out and sending it back to the browser. If you want to e-mail yourself, you'll want to use the mail() function; see:

http://www.php.net/mail

You'll probably want to put all of your variables together to form the body of the message. For example:

$body = "You've received a form submission from $first_name $last_name, whose e-mail address is $email. They said: $posting.";

And then pass $body into mail().