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Posted by J.O. Aho on 11/03/01 11:41
Good Man wrote:
> I am on the 'edit' screen of a web form, and I have a bunch of variables
> coming from a database that need to be placed into the form. In the
> past, I have been using PHP to pre-populate each field, something like
>
> <input type="text" id="firstName" value="<?= $first_name ?>" />
>
> But, since my "add" and "edit" screens are virtually the same, I'm
> thinking about using PHP to dynamically create "onload" javascript
> events that use a custom function... essentially something along the
> lines of
>
> onload = "setForm('firstName','<?= $first_name ?>');"
>
> So, option one hard-codes the form-field value directly into the HTML.
> Option two uses javascript to populate the fields.
Hardcode would be to use
<input type="text" id="firstName" value="John" />
directly in the page.
> This is a specific web application targeted to a finite audience who
> will be using javascript-enabled browsers. At this point, I'm thinking
> of going with the second option(javascript based), because I won't have
> to scroll down to each form-field tag in my document and add the "value"
> parameter (read: time saver).... the only drawback I can see is CPU Power
> I guess... Or is that a ridiculous concern? What about using Javascript
> to populate 100 fields?
You just moved the process time from the server to the client, what can slow
things down is the size of the javascript, the more the more lagish the page
will be.
> Most importantly, do I need to worry about client-side interruptions that
> can prevent the form from being populated (other than turning javascript
> off)?
I don't really see the point in using javascript at all in this case, you get
a more difficulty to figure out bugs.
if you use
<input type="text" id="firstName" value="<?= $first_name ?>" />
<input type="text" id="secondtName" value="<?= $second_name ?>" />
<input type="text" id="lastName" value="<?= $last_name ?>" />
You either have a value set of the variables $first_name, $second_name,
$last_name and so on (I know, I added the two last ones).
If a value isn't set, then the box will be empty and it's just to add the
values manually.
//Aho
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