Forum Moderators: phranque
I've taken a totally new thing to me and would love some guidance from the masters here. I know html/css and can apply pre written other code into these with instructions but time to go further maybe. :)
Client needs multiple forms collecting a few pages of information on his site. Creating the forms is not a problem for me, whethever with code or with dreamweaver. Then, we don't want the people who enter their info to go a page back to correct something and find all info is gone. I assume this will not be too hard with some javascript, right?
Then comes the more mysterious parts to me. He (client) will want clients who enter this information to be able to access a backend page where they can see the info. I assume we're talking databases at that point since we will be storing information and displaying later. Are there tools that will make building something like this easy, avoiding me really getting to know php/mysql, etc? Not that I wouldn't be excited to get into all that but timeline is an issue.
So, I appreciate any help and advice on this.
Thank you,
Miro
At the very least I would like to find out how to fill out multiple pages of forms and then when they click submit after the 4th or 5th page, all information comes in (email is fine) in one chunk.
Thanks again,
Miro
[webmasterworld.com...]
... totally new thing .... Creating the forms is not a problem for me, whethever with code or with dreamweaver.
The lack of responses is most likely because of this, there are just so many ways to do this it's impossible to describe them all. That link posts some good approaches to this type of task using PHP.
... we don't want the people who enter their info to go a page back to correct something and find all info is gone. I assume this will not be too hard with some javascript, right?
I wouldn't recommend Javascript for this. If you're creating a multiple page form that saves a form's state, you already have the values "in hand" as they are submitted. You save them in hidden fields (as described) or store them in a database.
One such system I had involved a loan application form. It was huge, and involved many factors the end user would have to go dig out of the attic or basement "important papers." It allowed the user to return at a later time, log in, and fill in the data. But your system is very likely to not require this, and the hidden fields approach would probably work.
Basically all that happens is you generate your forms dynamically. Your server-side script either a) opens a "template" for this form page and includes it in it's output, or b) builds the form internally and outputs it on demand. This allows you to populate the form values, select list indexes, or radio buttons with the entered values:
<input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="$email">
Where "$email" is your program's variable holding the submitted email value.
. . . clients who enter this information to be able to access a backend page where they can see the info. I assume we're talking databases at that point since we will be storing information and displaying later.
You can use databases - depending on what you have available, mySQL is probably the best choice - but you can also "store" these in plain text files. When doing either, be aware of best security practices; if you're storing credit card info, drivers license info, SSN, or any other "sensitive information" be aware of PCI compliance as the site owner and possibly you will be liable for any potential leak of this data.
all information comes in (email is fine) in one chunk
In this case you wouldn't need database interaction, just mail functions, which you'd probably want to add in the first scenario anyway.
Are there tools that will make building something like this easy, avoiding me really getting to know php/mysql, etc?
Not to my knowledge, but I don't keep up to date on "what's out there" as I usually code them myself. It sounds like this may need to be custom coded in any case. Others may have ideas.
but timeline is an issue
If you don't have a server-side language in your skill set (I.E., PHP, perl, asp, etc.) it can take you months to get good enough to pull this off. Or, you may patch something together that works but is riddled with security holes that will come back to you later (quite common, from the code I've seen.) Your best recourse is find a good coder that you can trust (which may prove more difficult than it seems) and outsource the server side coding.
