[SOLVED] <form name="form">?

[Northern Flame]

I've seen some forms that have something like

<form name="form" method="POST">

whats the point of the name?

I've tried messing around with this i created a php

page like this:

 

<?php
if(!isset($_POST['submit'])){
?>
<form method="POST" name="form">
<input type="text" name="text" size="20">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit">
</form>
<?php
} else{
echo $_POST['form'] . "<br>\n";
echo $_POST['text'] . "<br>\n";
echo $_POST['submit'] . "<br>\n";
}
?>

 

just to see what $_POST['form'] returns is it comes back blank.

is there a point to the name in a form?

[TheFilmGod]

isn't the name used to identify different forms. It's possible a page to have multiple forms isn't it?

 

I personally can't say for sure. On sites I had more than one form, I used a different name for the submit button and that did the trick!

[PFMaBiSmAd]

The name attribute in the <form ...> tag only has meaning in the browser and is used by client-side scripting languages.

[john010117]

The name attribute in the <form ...> tag only has meaning in the browser and is used by client-side scripting languages.

 

Expanding on that, it's used primarily by JavaScript for identifying specific fields in the form.

[gerkintrigg]

Yes, the form name is used to identify the form.

 

This way, you can use Javascript (heaven forbid!) to update form fields in the correct field. This way, you can have a permanent login script on every page of your site and still have an email form too. I use this principle when designing some of my sites (and yes, I do update forms using JavaScript too sometimes). I think dreamwever names them automatically form1 etc. but it's useful to name them yourself too.

[Ken2k7]

Like others said, you can use JavaScript to easily access the form like this:

 

<script>
document.write(document.forms['form'].text.value);
</script>

That should print out whatever value in the <input name='text' /> field of the form name 'form'. In your case, it won't print out anything because the input doesn't have a value. But if you change it to: <input name='text' value='hi' />, the code will print "hi"

 

The $_POST['form'] echos back a blank because it has no value. You didn't type anything in (not that you could)

[cooldude832]

the naming idea has long been depreciated as the more modern technique is the id tag and then getelementbyID('IDHERE').Atributeshere

 

[Northern Flame]

oh thanks,

i now understand why forms have the names on them