Do I need to use HTML to get user input from a browser? I'm writing a simple expense tracker and I want the data input to all be on one line, consisting of amount, category, description, payment method and date. I've got the mysql db set up fine, and I put together code snippets to get a drop-down box to show the various categories available.. but when I try to create a simple text box for a user to input amount or description I get lost.. everything I've found on the web seems to use HTML forms.. I just wanna keep my straight .php file. Here's my code for the drop-down box. [code]<? $dbh=mysql_connect ("localhost", "branthan_et", "enterprise") or die ('I cannot connect to the database because: ' . mysql_error()); mysql_select_db ("branthan_expensetracker"); $sqlOptions = "SELECT * from categories"; $resultOptions = mysql_query($sqlOptions); echo '<select name="selectName">'; echo '<option value="">--Select--</option>'; while($opt = mysql_fetch_array($resultOptions)) { echo '<option value="'.$opt['categories'].'">'.$opt['categories'].'</option>'; } echo '</select>'; ?>[/code] Do I have to echo the HTML? If so could you share an example of how I would do that please? Basically I want to get all the input into variables and create a new record in the table. I can handle the sql code, but the simple stuff is really messing me up!