Page 260 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Part III: Using PHP in Practice
❑ How to use hidden form fields to create a user - friendly three - stage registration form
❑ Creating forms that allow users to upload files
❑ How to use page redirection to make your forms smoother and safer to use

Once you ’ ve worked through this chapter you ’ ll be able to use Web forms to make your PHP scripts
much more useful and flexible.

How HTML Forms Work
Before looking at the PHP side of things, take a quick look at how an HTML form is constructed. (If
you ’ re already familiar with building HTML forms you may want to skip this section.)
An HTML form, or Web form, is simply a collection of HTML elements embedded within a standard
Web page. By adding different types of elements, you can create different form fields, such as text fields,
pull - down menus, checkboxes, and so on.

All Web forms start with an opening < form > tag, and end with a closing < /form > tag:

< form action=”myscript.php” method=”post” >
< !-- Contents of the form go here -- >
< /form >

By the way, the second line of code in this example is an HTML comment – – everything between the
<!-- and --> is ignored by the Web browser.

Notice that there are two attributes within the opening < form > tag:

❑ action tells the Web browser where to send the form data when the user fills out and
submits the form. This should either be an absolute URL (such as http://www.example.com/
myscript.php ) or a relative URL (such as myscript.php , /myscript.php , or ../
scripts/myscript.php ). The script at the specified URL should be capable of accepting
and processing the form data; more on this in a moment.

❑ method tells the browser how to send the form data. You can use two methods: get is useful for
sending small amounts of data and makes it easy for the user to resubmit the form, and post
can send much larger amounts of form data.

Once you ’ ve created your basic form element, you can fill it with various elements to create the fields
and other controls within your form (as well as other HTML elements such as headings, paragraphs, and
tables, if you so desire).

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