retaining form information when someone presses back

This might not be relavent for this forum, so if not please direct me
to the proper one; although I do like to keep my email list
subscriptions down.

I have a custom application in PHP in which a user fills out a form of
information. When the user submits, I perform sanity checking on the
user's submitted data and refuse to actually process/insert it if
those checks fail. However, my users are complaining that when they
press back to correct, all the data is gone from the form and they
have to re-enter it all. I know many websites that can retain the form
data when someone presses back; how is this done?

Flint M

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RE: retaining form information when someone presses back

i tend to have a function that show the form and a processing function. In
the processing function i preform my sanity checks and then if there are
errors pass the $_POST data back to the show_form($data, $errors) with the
relevant errors. This removes the need to have the users press the back
button and allows the form to show its data again..

Bastien


>From: "Flint Million"
>To: php-db@lists.php.net
>Subject: [PHP-DB] retaining form information when someone presses back
>Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 02:13:37 -0600
>
>This might not be relavent for this forum, so if not please direct me
>to the proper one; although I do like to keep my email list
>subscriptions down.
>
>I have a custom application in PHP in which a user fills out a form of
>information. When the user submits, I perform sanity checking on the
>user's submitted data and refuse to actually process/insert it if
>those checks fail. However, my users are complaining that when they
>press back to correct, all the data is gone from the form and they
>have to re-enter it all. I know many websites that can retain the form
>data when someone presses back; how is this done?
>
>Flint M
>
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>To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>

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Re: retaining form information when someone presses back

Flint Million:
> This might not be relavent for this forum, so if not please direct me
> to the proper one; although I do like to keep my email list
> subscriptions down.
>
> I have a custom application in PHP in which a user fills out a form of
> information. When the user submits, I perform sanity checking on the
> user's submitted data and refuse to actually process/insert it if
> those checks fail. However, my users are complaining that when they
> press back to correct, all the data is gone from the form and they
> have to re-enter it all. I know many websites that can retain the form
> data when someone presses back; how is this done?
>
> Flint M
>

ok, an input field might be something like name='username' size='8' maxlegth='32'> --> the submitted variable would
be stored in $_POST["username"] (or $_GET["username"] depending on what
method you use to submit it)
your back-button should now contain a link like href='fill-in-form.php?username=$_POST["username"]'>back to keep the
information
an other possibility might be using cookies but this would be impossible
if the user refuses to accept cookies, so this method might not be wanted

Chris

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Re: retaining form information when someone presses back

------=_Part_108262_5904035.1167721059936
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

try using:
header ("Cache-control: private");

i'm not sure that will work, try playing with header cache-control. anyway
as Bastien metioned it is better to have your form redisplayed with values
the user entered when validation failed rather than asking the user to click
the back button of their browser.

try this sample (not tested, too lazy :) but should work):

$var1 = NULL;
$var2 = NULL;

if (isset($_POST)) {
$var1 = $_POST['var1'];
$var2 = $_POST['var2'];
}

echo '

Re: retaining form information when someone presses back

Christopher Blöcker wrote:
> Flint Million:
>> This might not be relavent for this forum, so if not please direct me
>> to the proper one; although I do like to keep my email list
>> subscriptions down.
>>
>> I have a custom application in PHP in which a user fills out a form of
>> information. When the user submits, I perform sanity checking on the
>> user's submitted data and refuse to actually process/insert it if
>> those checks fail. However, my users are complaining that when they
>> press back to correct, all the data is gone from the form and they
>> have to re-enter it all. I know many websites that can retain the form
>> data when someone presses back; how is this done?
>>
>> Flint M
>>
>
> ok, an input field might be something like > name='username' size='8' maxlegth='32'> --> the submitted variable would
> be stored in $_POST["username"] (or $_GET["username"] depending on what
> method you use to submit it)

Please no!

*At least* use htmlentities or htmlspecialchars to stop xss attacks.

If I put:



as my username, and that alerts 'x', then I can steal cookies from your
computer and other bits of info as well.

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