PHP Post & Get
Post
HTML Code Excerpt:
<form action="process.php"
method="post">
<select name="item">
...
<input name="quantity"
type="text" />
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This HTML code specifies that
the form data will be submitted to
the "process.php" web page using
the POST method. The way that PHP
does this is to store all the
"posted" values into an
associative array called "$_POST".
Be sure to take notice the names
of the form data names, as they
represent the keys in the "$_POST"
associative array.
Now that you know about
associative arrays, the PHP code
from "process.php" should make a
litte more sense.
PHP Code Excerpt:
$quantity =
$_POST['quantity'];
$item = $_POST['item'];
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The form names are used as the
keys in the associative array, so
be sure that you never have two
input items in your HTML form that
have the same name. If you do,
then you might see some problems
arise.
PHP - GET
As we mentioned before, the
alternative to the post method is
get. If we were to change our HTML
form to the get method, it would
look like this:
HTML Code Excerpt:
<form action="process.php"
method="get">
<select name="item">
...
<input name="quantity"
type="text" />
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The get method is different in
that it passes the variables along
to the "process.php" web page by
appending them onto the end of the
URL. The URL, after clicking
submit, would have this added on
to the end of it:
"?item=##&quantity=##"
The question mark "?" tells the
browser that the following items
are variables. Now that we changed
the method of sending information
on "order.html", we must change
the "process.php" code to use the
"$_GET" associative array.
PHP Code Excerpt:
$quantity = $_GET['quantity'];
$item = $_GET['item'];
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After changing the array name
the script will function properly.
Using the get method displays the
variable information to your
visitor, so be sure you are not
sending password information or
other sensitive items with the get
method. You would not want your
visitors seeing something they are
not supposed to!
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