I am creating a button as such
<INPUT type='submit' name='name-of-button' value='Submit'>
However, this button is NOT enclused in a FORM. In other words, there isn't any form to submit.
That said, when a user clicks on the button, a certain action should start in PHP. For the sake of an example, clicking on Submit will write a value to the database.
Now, I am not sure how to handle the code in PHP. Do I have to put a form around it? I would like to check using something simlar to following PHP?
if (isset('name-of-button')) {
// Do something, such as writing to the db
}
I know the above code is incorrect. Because we have to submit the form, and use the post action as follows:
if (isset($_POST['name-of-button'])) {
// Do something, such as writing to the db
}
But again, I do not like to use a form if possible. PLEASE HELP :)
Please not that I do not want to use JavaScript either, pure PHP.
Thanks.
You can't make a browser send data to the server with only PHP and a HTML button. You have to make either a link that looks like a button, use JavaScript (AJAX), or enclose the button in a form.
OK, thanks everyone for your replies.
Just to make sure the post is complete and to help others:
As stated by some of your answers, to call a PHP function, I must either use form submit, use AJAX, or use a link. Therefore, for me, I will choose the easiest solution, which is use a form.
That said, according to the standard in HTML, you can use INPUT tags without a form. I think that was done so as to handle AJAX cases where you do not need a form. I was trying to find a way of doing the same straight to PHP, without a form, and without AJAX. It oviously does not work.
Thanks.
Related
I am new to html, I would be really glad if you can help me with this.
I have a web page where there is a list and some other text inputs and buttons. This option list can be populated by clicking the "add" button in the page, this add button is to direct to another page and in that page there are some chekboxes, those which are checked are loaded back to the main page,(where I have the list) .
At the end data in the main page needs to be loaded to the database, (what is in the list and in the text inputs).
Since I'm new I just know little about php and html, I thought I should have a form within a another form(form to "add items", form to load to the database) and it is not possible in html. Can anyone suggest the best way to do this? Do I need to use javascript?
Why can't the extra inputs (the ones that would be in the second form) be part of the first form? I think the question will become clearer if you post a sample form so we can see the relationship between the two forms.
But overall, since you're ultimately only submitting one form, then maybe all the inputs belong together. If what you're calling the second form isn't supposed to be visible right away, you can still have it be part of the same form, but only reveal it when needed.
Again, some sample data would help to understand the exact context of your question.
in php if you use input name="somename[]"
for a number of input elems
you will get an array in $_POST['somename'] and access all the values.
I think what you're after - if I understand you correctly - is ajax. Ajax allows you to asynchronously send data to/from another script without leaving the current page. This is accomplished using JavaScript. In your case I think what you need to do is set an onclick event in JavaScript to a button:
<input type="button" onclick="javascriptFunction()">
You can read more about ajax here:
http://www.tizag.com/ajaxTutorial/ajaxform.php
I am trying to do something really basic but can not seem to find a tutorial for it.
I have created a simple web form using HTML what I need todo is create a php file that will read the web form, open a new browser window (or display in same page) the contents of the web form, do toy guys have any tutorials on this?
Many thanks
Chris
I'm sure many will post different links to tutorials that they like, but I thought I would just give you the basic. The key parts to the form are the method and action. The Method attribute tells ths browser how to submit the data, either through GET or POST. The action attribute tells the browser where to submit the form. (In your case it will be, somepage.php) If you ever need the form to submit back to itself, you can here use explicitly type the page name or you can use use PHP to dynamically insert the page name. Finally, make sure that all your form fields use the name attribute, as this is how php will access the elements.
On the php side of things, your form variables will be stored in either $_GET or $_POST depending on how on method you used to submit your form. For example, assume you have a input element of type text with the name 'FirstName'. Within php you can access this by doing
<?php
var firstName = $_GET['FirstName'];
?>
This should be enough to get you started. Be sure to check out the php docs and the other tutorials listed on this page for a more details.
Please look at this tutorial: http://www.learnphp-tutorial.com/HtmlForms.cfm
And you can find many more tutorials if you search it on Google.
This should help : http://www.php-mysql-tutorial.com/wikis/php-tutorial/php-forms.aspx
Okay, I'm sorry that this is pretty complicated, but it shouldn't be that hard to solve...
Here's what I want to do. I have an HTML form that I want to upload to MySQL with PHP. That part's easy, but the thing is I want the submit button to be a Flash object. Somehow I need the Flash button to submit the form, but I think I can figure that out. The tricky part is that I need it to set another PHP variable before submitting the form. The variable will be determined by a bunch of stuff, but I can code that in actionscript later. I just need to figure out how to pass the variable back to the webpage. A $_POST variable would probably be fine.
Thanks!! Let me know if I need to clarify more...
edit: What if the flash object returned some javascript and set a variable that way?
Can anyone help with making it submit the form as well while still catching a variable?
Look at ExternalInterface for calling JavaScript from ActionScript and vice versa.
Lars is right about it. It may look like this
ExternalInterface.call('passmyvariables','value1','value2');
Your javasscript would be something like this
function passmyvariables(var1,var2){
//process myvar
form.submit();
}
you can have multiple variables.
An accessibility tip: avoid Flash when possible; it causes usability issues.
If you want to add a POST variable before submitting:
I don't think that Flash is allowed to access the DOM so this is JavaScript:
Create an input element appended as a child of the form
Set its type to hidden
Set its value to whatever you want to send.
That's only part of the equation; I don't know how to get Flash to trigger a script in the page.
EDIT
These functions can help get data from Flash objects.
flashObject.GetVariable(variableName)
flashObject.SetVariable(variableName, value)
I have been trying for a while now trying to figure out how to programmatically click a link using PHP and/or javascript. I have it setup so if the user clicks a link it will refresh a table. You don't really need to know why I want to do this b/c then it will go down a whole long road of confusion. Just know that there is a link to be clicked and I really really want to programmatically click that link using PHP and/or javascript.
Is there really no way to do this?
Edit: The code where I need to put the auto-click is in PHP, which would have to create and trigger some javascript or jquery or whatever.
Edit 2: Ok, now that you're all confused ... the real problem is that I have a Drupal form that has a property set to use AJAX when submitting. So the submission is done using the jquery plugin that is a module for Drupal. The AJAX setting is just an attribute setting and I do not have access to the underlying code that goes along with the submission of the form. Which forces me to have to refresh the table after the button is clicked. I really wish I could just attach the refreshing to the button click event for the submit of the form. But since I don't have access to that code I don't believe it's possible.
With Javascript, you can since it runs on the client machine, where the link exists. But the link doesn't even exist when PHP is doing it's magic, so you cannot click it "with" PHP. Keep in mind that PHP runs on the server, but the link exists only on the client.
Click a link with Javascript is rather simple:
// Index Page
document.getElementById("mylink").click();
Make sure all of your values are spelled properly. You can even output this command from PHP:
<?php print "<script type='text/javascript'>
document.getElementById('myLink').click();
</script>"; ?>
</body>
</html>
Note I placed this just before the closing </body> tag to ensure the link is present on the page.
Since it is drupal i assume that the form you're speaking of has an URL and therefore you could inject javascript code with the following module: JS Injector
I'm having problems submitting my ajax form. I am used to the old fashioned way with refresh but this new stuff is beyond me for the time being. It's time to start learning new technolohies.
I have an autosuggest box that is getting my results from a database and populating the textbox just fine. When I designed this about 6 months ago, I was searching the database on the value rather than the key value. This is a problem today and needs to be fixed.
WHat the ajax has returned to my script is the key/value pair. Now that I have the id, I need to pass that into my php method so I can process it from there.
Can somone please give me a hand with this? It seems simple enough but again, javascript was never my thing so I am lost.
Here is all of the relevant code. Also, I don't think, at least from the code samples I have seen so far that I even need a form tag. Am I correct on this? Ideally, I want to submit the found ajax value with the enter button and NOT using a button.
So, just to clarify, this is what happens. The user types 2 or 3 letters. The ajax queries the db on a "LIKE" operator and returns the matches. The user chooses the one he wants and then the id goes out to my method and returns the exact record in a different window.
<form method="post" class="hdrForm" id="search" action="../../index.php?cer=2" target="_top">
<input type="text" name="string" class="hdrInput" id="string" value="Quick Search"><div id="acDiv"></div>
</form>
Note.. I need the "id" in this function to be submitted. Right now, I am getting the POST val off the form tag and that's not correct but how?
AC.chooseFunc = function(id,label)
{
document.forms.search.submit();
}
Thanks for any help that you guys can give me on this.
Take a look at jQuery. It is a javascript library. It contains functionality for doing Ajax.
jQuery Ajax documentation.
document.getElementById("search").onsubmit = function() {
// Do what you want with the form
return false; // Stops submit continuing
}
This also degrades gracefully (if your server side program is written right) in that users without javascript get the form submitted normally to the page in the action attribute, without the AJAX.
I'd suggest you use a framework such as jQuery. A basic tutorial (including AJAX) is available
You have two problems. One is that you are telling the form to submit:
document.forms.search.submit();
That is what is causing your form to submit in the standard, non-xhr way - causing a refresh. Also, because your form does not contain an input element for the id, that is not being sent to the server even with a regular form submission.
I agree with the posters that it would be a good idea to use jQuery or something to do your ajax based submission. Something like this could be used inside of your "AC.chooseFunc" function instead of the form submit.
And yes, if you go ajax entirely, you don't even need a form tag.