[Novalug] question about behavior of cgi script from html form
Jeff Stoner
leapfrog@freeshell.org
Fri Sep 4 13:11:05 EDT 2009
On Fri, 4 Sep 2009, Bonnie Dalzell wrote:
> I give each reservation a different record number when it is made.
Is this reservation number generated when the form is loaded or when the
data in the form is submitted?
> However sometimes I wish to repeat most of the information entered in the
> form and only change a couple of things such as the dog's name and sex.
> I am not expecting someone to debug my script for me, I am just trying to
> figure out if the problem is due to my misunderstanding of how browsers and
> cgi scripts interact.
Remember, HTTP is stateless - each connection is 100% separate from the
next. This means if you want the appearance of state (some form fields
prepopulated with values from the prior form submission) then you have to
write your cgi to do that (or use AJAX.) Since each request is separate,
you need a way of identifying requests belonging to a particular user
- this is usually done using a cookie that contains a session number
(though there are other ways.)
The cgi script itself needs to be aware of prior state. If the user has
submitted a reservation request in the past, then grab some of the data
from that request and generate the form with those fields prepopulated,
otherwise, generate the form with all blank fields.
--Jeff
"You cannot unsay a cruel word." - Unknown
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