Forms in HTML. Question...

[Rainmaykr]

Hopefully one of the resident web-savvy members can help me here. I'm looking for a good FAQ or tutorial on implementing forms in html pages. All of the tutorials/FAQs I find just describe the process of creating text fields, etc. but none mention how to convert those variables into something a script can process, the script itself, or the back end of the process, at all.

 

Does something like this exist outside a Dreamweaver, et al., book?

 

Thanks all.

[Adam Tyner]

All of the tutorials/FAQs I find just describe the process of creating text fields, etc. but none mention how to convert those variables into something a script can process, the script itself, or the back end of the process, at all.

Basically, all the form itself is capable of doing is passing parameters to a script.

 

If you have a background using C or C++, I'd recommend digging through http://www.php.net -- any familiarity with C/C++ will make PHP a breeze to use as your scripting language. There's no shortage of sample PHP code floating around, and http://www.phpbuilder.com isn't a bad starting point.

 

To really do neat stuff, you need to have a database backend too. MySQL is the one that's most commonly used in tandem with PHP.

 

You probably won't wind up running any of this on your own PC, although you can if you're determined. Most web hosts will offer these to you for a pretty low price.

 

I've been coding PHP/MySQL applications professionally for (yikes!) more than 6 years now, so if you have any questions, I can probably answer 'em.

[Rainmaykr]

Thanks Adam.

 

Seems what looked like a fun little project just became work.

 

Thanks for the offer to answer some questions. I'll probably need a little help to unstick myself. Hopefully this'll be more intuitive than it does at first blush.

[Baiter]

What are you trying to do? If it's very basic data manipulation you can probably just use javascript.

[Rainmaykr]

Looking to create a set of fields for an application for entry into a pageant. About 30 fields or so, the contestants would select what group they'd wish to compete in, enter their name and vitals, etc, organize all the entered information and it shoots an email to the coordinator with all the info. That's all really.

[Adam Tyner]

If you can make the HTML for it and describe how you want the output to be formatted, I can throw together some PHP to do the processing.

[Rainmaykr]

Thanks, Adam. That would be hella wicked. I'll finish creating what I got an shoot it over to you this weekend or early next week.

[Adam Tyner]

Okey doke.