generic form mailer

[metazai]

All the form processors I've ever created with PHP have used $_POST or $_GET or $_REQUEST along with the specific variable names tied to the form elements. Is there a way to build a generic PHP Form processor (and mailer) that just reads everything sent over, variable names, values, and all? The idea is that it would be an ugly but flexible script that I wouldn't have to match up to the form elements by hand in the code every time.

I'm not looking for the code, just a shove in the right direction. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[sde]

$_REQUEST contains everything in $_GET and $_POST.

so, to read every variable sent over, you would just need to loop through the $_REQUEST array.

never tried to make one myself, but you could take the drupal approach. they define forms in arrays. then there's a separate 'validate' handler function, and then a 'submit' handler.

here's an example of a form element defined in drupal:

PHP Code:

$form['value1'] = array(
      '#type' => 'textfield',
      '#title' => 'Value 1',
      '#size' => 4,
      '#maxlength' => 4,
      '#description' => 'The first value to perform the multiplication with.'
); 


so you could take a structure like that and dynamically create your form. then, you could loop through the request vars to validate and submit. how to make that really generic may be tricky.

[metazai]

So, are you saying that $_REQUEST itself is an associative array? (Guess that would explain the square brackets)

That makes the problem a little easier. Don't know why I didn't think of it.

[sde]

yes it is. throw this at the top of your code to test it out.

PHP Code:

<?php
if (is_array($_REQUEST)) {
  foreach ($_REQUEST as $key => $value) {
    echo $key . ' = ' . $value . '<br />';
  }
}
?>

[DJMaze]

Ehm, $_REQUEST also contains cookies

[sde]

good point djm, didn't think about that.

$_POST is an associative array to so you could just use that.. or do 2 loops.

[metazai]

What is the implication of the "cookies" thing?

[sde]

you just need to consider that you may be reading cookie data and you don't really have any way to tell if the data is coming from your form, or from cookies.

[metazai]

Got it . . .thanks, both of you!

[metazai]

One other question, though . . .how can you avoid that cookie problem, other than using $_POST? I started using $_REQUEST to read my form data because I had been led to believe it was better that $_POST or $_REQUEST. Is there a way to check if the data being read by $_REQUEST isn't cookie-d or cached? sde, what did you mean by "2 loops"?

[DJMaze]

$_REQUEST is bad, just for questions you ask already!

Always only use $_POST methods, because $_GET fails if the URI in IE is more then 2048 bytes.

Also this way you can properly distinguish form mode settings ($_GET stuff in action="") and the form data ($_POST contains form fields)