Question

I have a form page in which either an INSERT or an UPDATE query is submitted, depending on the presence/absence of an ID (and when there’s an ID it’s used to retrieve the record and pre-populate the form). In either case, the processing is in form.php so the form’s action is itself (action="/form.php">). My problem is that when form.php reloads post-submit, the URL has an empty ID so the page enters ‘INSERT’ mode, rather than ‘UPDATE’ mode. What’s the best practice way to resolve this?

1. What operator/condition should I add to this ‘if’ …

   if (isset($_GET['ID']) && is_numeric($_GET['ID'])) {

… to include post-submit empty ID URL (i.e., form.php?ID=)

OR,

1. How do I pass `$newID = mysql_insert_id();1 to the form’s action? (I’ve tried a number of variations here w/out success)

   $newID = mysql_insert_id();
   … [ snip ] …
   <form method="post" action="/html/form.php?ID=<?php echo $newID; ?>">

I’m reading about hidden inputs and sessions but it’s not yet clear to me how to use either to solve this problem. Lastly, since it isn’t absolutely necessary that I reload the form page, I’m increasingly tempted to move the form processing/db queries to another page (e.g., process.php) to hopefully simplify; any opinions on this? What’s best/common practice?

Many thanks in advance,

svs

Answer 1

Common practice should be to keep data posting separate from data displaying. This prevents accidental adds on a user’s first arrival to the page as well as accidental double-posts if the user hits refresh.

In addition, keeping the logic separate makes the code more readable and maintainable in the future.

The approach you should probably look for is:

view.php?ID=<record to view> // Only displays a record already in the DB
add.php                      // The add record form with action="process_add.php"
process_add.php?Field1=<>&Field2=<>... // Receives data from add.php, puts it in
                                       // the database and then forwards back to
                                       // view.php or add.php as you see fit.

EDIT: While I have GET arguments on process_add.php, they are only there to demonstrate that they are being passed. They should be sent as POST arguments in and actual implementation.