Topic awaiting preservation: Just One Checkbox

This is reduclously hard for me to understand... I'm writing a PHP page that has a checkbox on it.

submit:

if it's checked

	send 1

else

	send 0

I know this has to be what's going on beneath the surface. After consulting a coleague, this was my response:
bmud: any suggestions?
Philihp: oh, checkboxes when unselected won't send anything but when they are selected, they send something like name=yes
Philihp: i think
Philihp: name=somethin
bmud: interesting
Philihp: is how html checkbox forms work
bmud: so, i should check for if the name equals the name?
Philihp: well, you could do, like on your submit page
Philihp: if(@$_GET['chkbox']=='yes')
Philihp: the @ will just repress any PHP_Notifications
Philihp: in case they are enabled
Philihp: the most common debugging thing in php
Philihp: that id o
Philihp: is to have a page
Philihp: that just has this:
Philihp: <?
Philihp: print_r($_SERVER);
Philihp: print_r($_POST);
Philihp: print_r($_GET);
Philihp: ?>
Philihp: (possibly enclosed in <pre></pre> tags)

Anyway... my form has the following:

<form method="post" action="<?php echo $PHP_SELF?>">

So there isn't any pre-submit function that I can just add code to... yet? I'm really confused on this one.

At least this part works just fine:

<input type="checkbox" name="visible" value="<?php echo $visible ?>" <?php echo (($id)?( ($visible == true)?('checked') :('') ) :('checked')); ?> />

[edit] smilies go off.. [/edit]

Shine and shine. :: [Cell=992] :: [See my team's 30 second animation]

[This message has been edited by Bmud (edited 04-10-2004).]

Bmud -

As you're sending the form's contents via the POST and not the GET method you'd need to check it like this:

if (isset($_POST['visible'])) {

        echo "Checkbox checked!";

}

else {

        echo "Checkbox not checked!";

}

That way there's no need to repress PHP's warnings by using the @.

Though after reading your post again I'm not too sure any more if this really was your question. Was it?


kuckus

And as for the debugging method your colleague mentioned, you can insert those lines just about anywhere in the file. I have them at the very beginning most of the time so the outputted information is the first thing I see when viewing the page in the browser.

kuckus, that made everything make sense again. Thankyou. Now then, where would i put such a block of code as you suggested? The post command uses the action

<?php echo $PHP_SELF?>

...can I change that to a function somehow that will run the checking before posting?

[edit] hey! some specifics! I'm using the post method to send the data to a mySQL database. The tinyint holds 1 or 0. [/edit]

Shine and shine. :: [Cell=992] :: [See my team's 30 second animation]

[This message has been edited by Bmud (edited 04-10-2004).]

It's easiest if you assign a name to the form's submit button - then you can divide your PHP file up into two big parts, one for the form and one for the processing after data has been entered.

E.g.


<?php

if (!isset($_POST['submit'])) {
// the form hasn't been submitted yet -> display it

?>

<form .....>
...
<input type="submit" name="submit" />
</form>

<?php

} //closing the if block

else {

//the form has been submitted -> do whatever needs to be done with the varibles (something like the if/else from my first reply)

......

}

?>


If you've never done anything like this before then I'd suggest you have a look at my contact page tutorial over at the GN. Though you won't find any checkboxes there the PHP to handle the form data is very similar.
http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorial/contact_page/


kuckus