PHP

Creating a Form

There are two ways of creating a form. You can use HTML to create a form or you can use PHP to do the same.

The following steps are needed to create a form:

Start: The form starts with the <form> tag.
Action: The action attribute of the <form> tag is the URL of the PHP script that will process the data input from the form.
Method: There are two HTTP methods to process the data input:
- GET: It is used mainly to retrieve static HTML documents. The data is sent to the server by attaching it to the end of the URL in what is called the query string. The size limit is 100 characters.(default)
- POST: It is used to process the form that causes side effects, like the modification of a databse, etc. It does not append input to the URL. Instead the data is put into an HTTP header message body that has no size restrictions.
Create: Add the different fields for the form: input text, textarea, password, checkbox, radio, select, hidden, file, and image.
Submit: Add a submit button so that the form can be processed. This will launch the program listed in the action attribute. Add a reset button if you want to reset the data before submitting.
End: Close the form with the </form> tag.

<form action="script_name" method="GET|POST">
<input type="text" name"" size="" value="" maxlength="" />
<input type="checkbox" name="" value="" />
<input type="radio" name="" value="" />
<input type="password" name="" />
<input type="hidden" name="" />
<select name=""><option></option></select>
<textarea name="" rows="" cols=""></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="submit">
</form>

This is a form using the GET method.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="EN" lang="EN">
<head>
<title>PHP</title>
<meta Name="Author" Content="Hann So">
</head>
<body>
<p>
<form action="example_form_process.php" method="GET"><br />
Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br />
Choose a place:
	<input type="checkbox" name="place1" value="New York" />New York
	<input type="checkbox" name="place2" value="San Francisco" />San Francisco
	<input type="checkbox" name="place3" value="LA" />LA
	<br />
What do you like:
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="condo" />condo
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="house" />house
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="rent" />rent
	<br />
Vacation spot:<select name="vacation">
	<option value="paris" />Paris</option>
	<option value="london" />London</option>
	<option value="rome" />Rome</option>
	</select>
	<br />
Comments: <textarea name="comments" rows="5" cols="50"></textarea><br />
<input type="submit" value="submit">
<input type="reset" value="Clear">
</form>
</p>
</body>
</html>

View the effect

This is the PHP script to handle the form.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="EN" lang="EN">
<head>
<title>PHP</title>
<meta Name="Author" Content="Hann So">
</head>
<body>
<p>
<?php
Here is the data from the form:
</p>
<p>
<?php
// get the ndata from $_REQUEST
foreach($_REQUEST as $key =>$value) {
	if (is_array($value)) {
		foreach ($value as $item) {
			echo $key, " = ", $items, "<br />";
		}
	}
	else {
			echo $key, " = ", $value, "<br />";
	}
}

?>
</p>
</body>
</html>

This is a form using the POST method.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="EN" lang="EN">
<head>
<title>PHP</title>
<meta Name="Author" Content="Hann So">
</head>
<body>
<p>
<form action="example_form_process.php" method="POST"><br />
Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br />
Choose a place:
	<input type="checkbox" name="place1" value="New York" />New York
	<input type="checkbox" name="place2" value="San Francisco" />San Francisco
	<input type="checkbox" name="place3" value="LA" />LA
	<br />
What do you like:
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="condo" />condo
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="house" />house
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="rent" />rent
	<br />
Vacation spot:<select name="vacation">
	<option value="paris" />Paris</option>
	<option value="london" />London</option>
	<option value="rome" />Rome</option>
	</select>
	<br />
Comments: <textarea name="comments" rows="5" cols="50"></textarea><br />
<input type="submit" value="submit">
<input type="reset" value="Clear">
</form>
</p>
</body>
</html>

View the effect

PHP has access to the the type of request being used in the $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] special superglobal array. To check which methoid is used, the following conditional can be included in your PHP script:

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']=='GET') {......}
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']=='POST') {......}

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="EN" lang="EN">
<head>
<title>PHP</title>
<meta Name="Author" Content="Hann So">
</head>
<body>
<p>
<?php
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'GET') {
?>
<form action = "<?php echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] ?>" method="post">
Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br />
Choose a place:
	<input type="checkbox" name="place1" value="New York" />New York
	<input type="checkbox" name="place2" value="San Francisco" />San Francisco
	<input type="checkbox" name="place3" value="LA" />LA
	<br />
What do you like:
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="condo" />condo
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="house" />house
	<input type="radio" name="choice" value="rent" />rent
	<br />
Vacation spot:<select name="vacation">
	<option value="paris" />Paris</option>
	<option value="london" />London</option>
	<option value="rome" />Rome</option>
	</select>
	<br />
Comments: <textarea name="comments" rows="5" cols="50"></textarea><br />
<input type="submit" value="submit">
<input type="reset" value="Clear">
</form>
<?php } else {
// get the ndata from $_REQUEST
foreach($_REQUEST as $key =>$value) {
	if (is_array($value)) {
		foreach ($value as $item) {
			echo $key, " = ", $items, "<br />";
		}
	}
	else {
			echo $key, " = ", $value, "<br />";
	}
}
}
?>
</p>
</body>
</html>

View the effect