We continue now by creating a simple order form. The processing of forms
like this is one of the more common things to be done with server side languages
including PHP. For our example we have chosen the component order form
from the Acme Widget Company (of course!) Here’s the code for the entire
form:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>Acme Widget Company</title>
</head>
<body style="font-family: Arial">
<h1><br>
Acme Widget Company</h1>
<p>Component Order Form</p>
<FORM ACTION="processorder.php" method=post>
<table border=0>
<tr>
<td width=150>Item<br>
</td>
<td width=15>Quantity<br>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Bases</td>
<td align="center"><input type="text" name="qtybases" size="3"
maxlength="3"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Stems</td>
<td align="center"><input type="text" name="qtystems" size="3" maxlength="3"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tops</td>
<td align="center"><input type="text" name="qtytops" size="3"
maxlength="3"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="center"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Enter Order"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</body>
</html>
You can click here to see
what this form looks like in your browser.
Now let’s break it down. As with our last example, most of the code you
see is ordinary HTML. Notice, however, that the ACTION= on the FORM
statement points to a PHP file called processorder.php (the capitals we’ve used
here are only to highlight to code we’re talking about – it doesn’t make any
difference whether you use capitals or lowercase letters, except that the
filename may be case sensitive if your site is hosted on a Unix/Linux system.).
When the user hits the "enter order" button, the file whose name (URL) appears
in the ACTION statement will be loaded and the data the user typed into the form
elements will be passed to it. The data will be identified to that file by
the field names used on the form, here "qtybases", "qtystems" and "qtytops".
For this reason it’s a good idea to use easily recognized and meaningful names,
such as ours are.
There’s really no PHP code in this form (which is why it’s in a file named with a
.html extension) so we’ll move right along to the file that will process our
order.
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