phppup

I'm thinking it through. I actually may be able to adapt something with your suggestion that COULD do the trick. A little more thought and a review of what I've got and we'll see.

You may need to read my post that is at the START of this thread. That's where I describe the problem that I'm trying to resolve. Thanks.

I've generally stayed away from that methodology (not exactly sure of why) and used SELF-evaluating pages that retain the field data. ///I wonder if I can redirect my page to itself to recover from the "second click" issue that I'm having, although that might create new issues and more scripting (especially if I want the page to appear "user friendly") ////NOPE, that did not work very well

I've read that JavaScript is not a secure method to rely on for validation. I prefer to resolve this as a PHP problem rather than divert to JS as a solution.

I may just be having a mental block from reading the same reproduced examples online, but... As a concept: A form has several fields that are validated with PHP. They cannot be analyzed until the form is submitted, right? [assuming basic coding] So here's where my problem is: <form action="validation.php" method="post"> will continually bring a user to the validation.php page. If there is ONLY acceptable data, they can then be redirected to another page [mynextpage.htm], right? And if there is bad data, they will get a group of error messages and need to go back to the form. But I don't want a user to advance until all fields are acceptable, so I tried <form action= <? echo $validate; ?> method="post"> And then added a condition if($errors == 0) { $validate = "validation.php"; } It seems to work EXCEPT that the submit button needs to be clicked twice. My assumption is that the first click fills-in the variable, and the second click initiates the action. How can I make this work with one click, or better resolve this issue?

It's starting to make more sense.

I would have thought that less columns translates to faster/more efficient searching. If I have id, name, email, phone, birthday, favorite_color as fields then these are all 1:1. But if I primarily refer to id, name, and email, I would think a 1:1 with a table of "personal_details" would seem appropriate.

Are there any guides/tutorials online that you would recommend to upgrade my skills? I've found several but nothing that was spectacular. One site started Does this seem like an accurate statement?

I should auto increment my main table and then pass that id through to subsequent tables? In the past, I have used the id as a user_id as well. If I shouldn't store derived data (which I've seen before and applied) how can I create a system where the first person to complete all 4 questions is retained as cust#1, the second as #2, and so on? It seems a bit wasteful to seek the person that completed all questions in place 201 out of 2000 partial submissions instead of simply finding cust#201.

So essentially I'm overthinking and not effecting performance (significantly) by searching through 50 records looking for the 2 users that answered all 4 questions versus establishing a Table2 with only pertinent data?

After collecting basic identification info (ie.: name, email, phone) I am having users answer 4 multiple choice questions. After submitting an answer, the table will update the specific row of Table1. Not everyone will complete all 4 questions (for a variety of reasons). I want to have a separate table for individuals that have answered all 4 questions. My assumption is that it would be more efficient to use a separate table of "qualified individuals" for grading and contact than to unnecessarily evaluate data that is inapplicable. Perhaps something like; if ($Question4 != ""){ SQL = //copy the row from table1 to table2 } The REAL issue here is whether I need to list each column name EXCEPT for the auto incremented id OR is there a way to SELECT * (except for column 1 which is id) ? This will provide me with a table of only fully completed surveys with id numbers that are different from Table1, but sequential. Or should I just maintain Table1 and not be concerned with rows of incomplete information? Am I overthinking this? Or making progress on my approaches?

@Barand Thanks, I have that. But does MySql/PHP have a built in "understanding" when looking for submissions on May 5, 2022 between 9:05:00 AM and 1:30:00 PM? Or should I just record time the time data as a 24 hour clock without colons and search WHERE time > 90500 && time < 133000 ? (As opposed to h:i:s)

I am setting up a form and plan to have the data stored in a table. When I insert the information, I want to include the time and date of the submission. Is there a best practice for apply so that pitfalls are avoided? If I expect to want to review instances that occur from 9AM to NOON, or from one date to another, is it unwise to use colons, slashes, hyphens?

I recently had occasion to use <input type="color"> It seemed like a nice idea until I viewed it on an IE 11 browser. Since IE11 does not support the tag, it provided a text input instead of the COLOR input functionality. The input field CAN be used as a substitute as long as acceptable color NAMES are typed, but the field size is much wider than it would be as type=color in a newer browser (and that alters the page layout). Since a user COULD be using an older browser, it seems that controlling the WIDTH of the input should solve that problem. The real issue is a way to create a script to determine whether the setting adjustment is even necessary. Something like if (input [type='color'] != a cute button with a color graphic) { input.width = 10px; } Insightful responses, please. PS: While on the topic, does anyone happen to know the DEFAULT settings for input="text" with regard to the height, width, font size, font family of the field?

@Barand Thanks. But this solution looks like it will only identify one (the first) instance of cat. Suppose the file contained assorted sentences of "Funny things my pet does." While each paragraph will contain a sentence "My [type of pet] does this silly thing [period]." not every paragraph will contain "cat" because a "cat" is not the only pet.

This is why I inquired about the loop.

If "cat" is found, then I want the entire sentence that contains cat. I imagine I can find a way to get from "cat" to a period (at end of sentence).

I see how substr_count works. But I want to add to it with echo "Occurrence $cnt says" . $blahblahblah Is there a built-in function to use for this? Or do I need to create a loop like if( i=0; i<$cnt; i++){ //if this position was already used then continue //otherwise, i assume i will get there same data i times } to get a complete listing?

Thanks. It's a great starting point. And yes, I'm very familiar with the manuals string reference pages (and have found them helpful in the past). Let's see where all this takes me next. LOL

@ginerjm I think I became intrigued with querySelectorAll. Having said that, what is the best way to move through the data (most likely as a string) to achieve an accumulation of like instances. eg: find all instances of "cat" Do I count the line that the first instance occurred on and create a clause to search for an instance where $line > $the_previous ?

Some good information that I will have to try out. Since I am already somewhat invested in the JavaScript method, it will be interesting to put them side by side to see if I get identical results. Since I need to"read" the file from the server, it would be much cleaner to keep this completely within a PHP format. Thanks for the help.

@ginerjm I am not a code by either profession or training. More like an overzealous hobbyist. And while I understand your example, it's not something that I would have thought of myself, nor have I seen examples like it in my search engine queries. So, thanks. Now the question is, how (if possible) would I avoid JavaScript and have PHP pull results from those resulting lines in your example? My current thought process is to use document.querySelector in order to loop through and pull data to use on a new script. @Barand Admittedly, this is something that came up AFTER implementation of other ideas, so it may be a backwards approach. But for now, it's (hopefully) easier than re-structuring my other files. So, getting info that already exists and re-using it in this manner just might work.

@ginerjm And what (in PHP) will? This is why I felt that moving it into JavaScript thru a variable was a fair solution.

@Barand I have been read the manual. And, file_get_contents made everything go bonkers. I came here in a moment of frustration (knowing I was missed). But if I am on the right path, then I will continue my journey. Thank you, sensei.

I'm trying to gain access to a file for the purpose of extracting a portion of it for use with JavaScript. If there's an advisable methodology that can be shared, that would be GREAT. The best that I've come up with is to use readfile("sample.php"); to gain access to the data. However, I then want to run a JavaScript on this data. Is there a recommended way to accomplish this? The only way I can think of is to move the data into a variable, but my effort has a bug. echo readfile("sample.php"); //provides a viable result //but then... $my_variable = readfile("sample.php"); echo $my_variable; //provides a number (I have not determined what that number represents... perhaps a line or character count??) //Note: print_r($my_variable) provides same result How can I achieve a successful result and transfer the data so that JavaScript can affect it?