PHP:HTML / $_POST FORM

Question

I have this:

 <form action="profiles.php" method="POST" name="SearchSimple" id="SearchSimple" >
<input name="search" id="s" style="width: 150px;" type="text">
 <a style="display: inline-block; width: 100px; font-weight: bold; cursor: pointer;" id="submitSearchSimple">Search </a>
 <script>
 $('#submitSearchSimple').click(function() {
 javascript:document.SearchSimple.submit();
 });
 </script>
</form>

It submits fine although when i do

if($_POST["submitSearchSimple"] && isset($_POST["submitSearchSimple"])) {
echo $_POST["s"] . " -TEST";
}

It doesnt show.. I get nothing

• deceze: if ($_POST["submitSearchSimple"] && isset($_POST["submitSearchSimple"])) needs to be the other way around. You test for isset to figure out if the variable exists in the first place, to avoid trying to access a variable that doesn't exist (which results in a warning). Hence: if (isset($foo) && $foo) to test for "if variable exists and variable is true-ish". Which BTW is the same as if (!empty($foo)).

Answer 1

In PHP, POST variables work only for INPUT elements, SELECT elements & that too in a FORM, only when the form is submitted. Also you need to specify the "name" attribute of those elements to be catched / used by the POST superglobal array variable.

In your case, you can simply do this:-
if(isset($_POST["search"]) && !empty($_POST["search"])) {
 echo $_POST["search"] . " -TEST";
}

Always remember that there is one major difference in PHP with JavaScript / jQuery. In JavaScript / jQuery, you can use either the "id" attribute or the "name" attribute to validate / manipulate the fields. But in PHP, it is always the "name" attribute of the field that is important, so be careful in doing those.

Hope it helps.

• deceze: isset($_POST["search"]) && !empty($_POST["search"]) is halfway redundant. You can skip the isset check.
• Knowledge Craving: @deceze - There are specific situations where the "isset" check is necessary instead of just providing the variable in the "if" condition. For example, let's say we have a variable $abc = 0;. Now if we just provide the variable in the condition as if ($abc), it will not work, as if (0) doesn't satisfy the condition. So, in this case, we will need to use if (isset($abc)) to successfully pass the condition.
• deceze: Huh? 0 won't satisfy !empty though, so it's entirely pointless.
• Knowledge Craving: That's why I normally use this pair - isset() && !empty(). :)
• deceze: And that's completely pointless. :) !empty($foo) is equivalent to isset($foo) && $foo (empty($foo) is equivalent to !isset($foo) || !$foo). So you're really writing isset($foo) && isset($foo) && $foo, which also doesn't work if $foo is 0.

Answer 2

Your form input's name is "search" not "submitSearchSimple".

The id is not passed to the server and neither is anything that isn't a form control (like the anchor in your example).

Answer 3

A simple way to identify what variable you passed as POST : you could have done a *var_dump($_POST)* in your profiles.php. You would have seen

array(1) { ["search"]=> string(4) "test" }

Therefore, you could have seen that it wasn't $_POST["s"] but $_POST["search"] and concluded that it wasn't the id that gives the name of the index but the name.

I don't see the point of using javascript in this case... (well, i can imagine it's for css styling, but you can easily style a submit button anyway.