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Posted by Toby Inkster on 11/12/05 14:03
Like me, you are probably confronted with many requests for surveys,
questionnaires, feedback forms, registration forms and so forth: forms
where the processing requirements are very simple (store in a database or
e-mail to a particular address).
Despite the simple requirements, there is often quite a lot of work
involved: crafting a database to store results, writing a function to
store the data to the database, one to verify submitted data (e.g. make
sure that if you've asked for an e-mail address, it contains an @-sign),
and marking up the form itself (which can be quite a task if you want to
make correct use of <label>, <th scope="blah">, etc.
So I introduce my reusable form functions, with the rather unglamorous
name of inc_surveytool.php v1.0.
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/Software/inc_surveytool.phps
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/Software/inc_surveytool.txt
They are far from finished (expect a 1.1 and a 2.0 version soon -- I have
big plans for them). Despite being 1.0, I think there is still a lot of
work to be done, and I'd like some feedback.
If you needed to sum them up in one pithy line: It's an entire programming
language for creating and validating HTML forms.
Here is an example of what you can do with them:
<?php
include 'inc_surveytool.php';
print "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN\"\n";
print " \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd\">\n";
print "<title>Example Form</title>\n";
$widgets = "Form
mailto=me@example.com
multiplesubmissions=1
showsubmissions=0
Text 1 100 / /
name=Please enter your name:
Integer 1 150
age=Please enter your age:
Multi 1 3
statements=Which of these statements do you agree with?
1=Foo is good.
2=Bar is good.
3=Quux is good.
4=Flibble is good.
5=Blah is good.
GridSingle
satisfaction=Please rate the following.
Cols
1=Excellent
2=Good
3=Average
4=Poor
5=Rubbish
Rows
foo=Foo
bar=Bar
qux=Quux
flb=Flibble
blh=Blah
Units Volume 5
vol=How much do you like Foo?";
form_Main($widgets);
?>
This will display a semantically–marked-up (even nicely indented!) form
containing:
* an input for the user's name, which will be checked to be between 1
and 100 digits, and checked that it matches the perl-compatible
regular expression / / (i.e. it must contain a space character);
* an input for the user's age, which will be checked to be an integer
between 1 and 150 upon submission;
* five checkboxes asking them what they agree with: they must tick
between 1 and 3 boxes;
* a table allowing the user to rate some things on a scale of 1 to 5;
* an input allowing the user to enter a physical volume in a choice of
kilolitre, litre, millilitre, brpint, fluidounce, m^2, cm^2, mm^2
with m^2 being the default.
When the form is submitted, it will be validated and e-mailed to
me@example.com. The submission will be stored in a database. You would be
able to visit the form, adding a query string "?adminscreen=1" to view the
results. (Security is handled by editing a function called form_WhoisAdmin
which can test for IP address, cookies, session data, etc.)
(Oh, and the physical volume I mentioned is converted to litres and stored
in both the user's chosen units, and the converted units for easier
sorting!)
If the users are logged in, or may be uniquely identified somehow (exactly
how to identify each user is specified in function form_Whois, which can
be customised for your own site) then it is possible to allow or disallow
multiple submissions for one user, and to control what happens when there
are multiple submissions (the new submission could over-write the old one,
or the submissions could be stored alongside each other). Users returning
to the form are able to view previous submissions.
Anyway, all this is only the tip of the iceberg -- it's a very flexible,
very capable library of form-building functions.
The reason I post is that I'd like some other people to try it out and get
a feel for how it works and what more is needed. I'd also like people to
point out any obvious security flaws.
Requirements:
* PHP 4.3;
* an SQL database (PostgreSQL supported, MySQL has been catered
for, but not properly tested);
* GNU Units ("/usr/bin/units") if you want to be able to use the
Units widget.
There is almost zero documentation, so if you'd like to use it, do drop me
an e-mail (mail at tobyinkster.co.uk) and I'll try to answer any
questions. If there is demand, I might even set up a mailing list.
--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
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