Multi-Page Form In Drupal With Database Interaction

[chris.corbett]

Hello all --

 

I am seeking help developing a multi-page form in Drupal 6 that interacts with both external databases as well as the Drupal DB.

 

I am an experienced web developer with PHP and other languages.  Doing something like I describe above would be rather simple.  I've needed to do all of my recent development within Drupal and I'm finding that mimicking this in Drupal to be somewhat difficult.

 

Here is what I'm looking to do within Drupal:

 

1) Create simple one field form prompting for user input

2) Query external DB based on input from form in step 1

3) Display form (radio buttons) for all results from query in step 2; allowing user to choose an option

4) Display new form to collect additional information to associate to option chosen

5) Write all collected data to a separate, preexisting table

 

I have the form from step 1 done and querying the database in step 2.  I then have the results writing back as simple table rows.

 

Where I'm running into trouble is in step 3, returning the results as a new "radio-buttoned" form and further "step-ifying" my Drupal page to accomplish steps 4 and 5.  I've found numerous examples of how to do this for Drupal 6, but every time I try to add step code to mine, I meet failure.

 

Any help and/direction anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you!