PHP Tutorials - Supporting Multiple Submit Buttons

Home >> FAQs/Tutorials >> PHP Script Tutorials and Tips >> Index

By: FYICenter.com

How To Support Multiple Submit Buttons?

Sometimes, you may need to give visitors multiple submit buttons on a single form to allow them to submit the form for different purposes. For example, when you show your customer a purchase order in a Web form, you may give your customer 3 submit buttons as "Save", "Copy", and "Delete". You can do this by adding "name" and "value" attributes to the <INPUT TYPE=submit ...> tags to differentiate the buttons. The following PHP script is a modified version of submit_comments.php with 3 submit buttons:

<?php
  $comment = 'I want to say: "It\'s a good site! :->"';
  $comment = htmlspecialchars($comment);
  print("<html><form action=processing_forms.php method=post>");
  print("<table><tr><td colspan=2>Please enter and submit your"
    ." comments about FYICenter.com:</td></tr>");
  print("<tr><td>Your Name:</td>"
    ."<td><input type=text name=name></td></tr>\n");
  print("<tr><td>Comments:</td>"
    ."<td><input type=text name=comment value=\"$comment\" size=40>"
    ."</td></tr>\n");
  print("<tr><td colspan=2>"
    .'<input type=submit name=submit value="Submit now">'
    .'<input type=submit name=submit value="Save only">'
    .'<input type=submit name=submit value="Cancel">'
    ."<td></tr></table>\n");
  print("</form></html>\n");
?>

If you view this PHP page, you will see 3 buttons. If submit the form by clicking the "Save only" button, you will get something like this:

Number of values: 3
  name = Peter
  comment = I want to say: "It's a good site! :->"
  submit = Save only

Obviously, different code logics should be written based on the received value of the "submit" field.

(Continued on next topic...)

Selected Developer Jobs:

More...