Great. You are in a fine place, then. Don’t worry, we’ll take this a
step at a time.
You will be using a plain text file for your database, and a single
form on one page to update everything. The first step will be to set
up the form so that this will be simple to process. We’ll get to the
rest in a while. From the looks of things, and from your initial
message, there won’t be much need for a complex error-checking
system. Can you presume that everyone will behave themselves and not
register M. & M. Mouse for the noon shift?
I would lay this page out using a table drawn with the table tool.
Draw a table with 4 columns and as many rows as you want to have time
slots, some cellpadding to keep things from crashing together, and no
borders.
In the first column, add your labels for the time slots. In the
second column, don’t put anything yet. In the third column, add your
text fields for names. Using the third tab from the left of the
Inspector, name these fields as follows:
names[1][]
names[1][]
names[2][]
names[2][]
names[3][]
names[3][]
and so forth, changing the index number upward for each. The first
pair of square brackets establishes the time slot key, the second
establishes the id of that field. By leaving the second pair blank,
you tell the Web server to treat it as an automatically-indexed
array. This keeps you from having to name every single field in the
form uniquely, and match it up with a similar handler on the
processing script.
In the last column, add a single Submit button to each row. You won’t
need to do anything special with these, they will all just submit the
entire form.
When you have this part finished, post it somewhere that we can
review it, and we’ll get on to the next stage.
Walter
On Nov 19, 2008, at 11:31 AM, Robin Stark wrote:
PHP 5.2.6 and safe_mode is off.
This has to be easy, Walter, really easy. Not Walter Lee Davis
easy, but Shirley the Sheep easy. I am capable of tweaking code and
changing settings AND following very precise instructions. I’m
getting sweaty palms already. I was actually on the Dynamo list for
a while, but I could only READ the emails, not UNDERSTAND any of it.
On Nov 19, 2008, at 9:06 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
Wow. That’s going to be a real headache to make and maintain. If
you’re used to using FTG, then you must have PHP on your server.
Can you make a little test file and find out what version? I have
a couple of ideas you could try, but the precise implementation
would depend on the version of PHP you have at hand.
Use a plain-text editor like TextWrangler or BBEdit or TextMate
(or Apple TextEdit in plain-text mode) and create a new file.
Paste the following code block into it:
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
(If you’re viewing this in Mail, don’t include the row of tildes
on either side.)
Save this file with some cryptic name that ends in .php, like
asdfasdf.php, and upload it to your server somewhere. Visit this
page with a web browser, and make note of the major and minor
version of PHP (big type near the top) and also search for the
term safe_mode and see if it is on or off. (There will be two
settings for this property – global and local – note them both.)
Armed with this info, fire back to the list. Perhaps even consider
posting this on the Dynamo list, where large blobs of code go
relatively unchallenged. As complex as this form looks, I think
the actual solution will be fairly elegant and will also teach you
something. The method you propose will be a hard slog, will
probably work okay, but will be incredibly difficult to make work
in a meaningful manner.
Walter
On Nov 19, 2008, at 9:35 AM, Robin Stark wrote:
I have no scripting skills or knowledge of MySQL or anything that
a normal person would probably use to do this thing that I want
to do, but this is what I want to do and how I propose to do it.
If there is another way for a person of my limited skills to do
this, I would be happy to hear about it.
I want to build a page where people can sign up to volunteer for
different shifts on an activity. There are 8 time slots
throughout the day for two days, e.g., Sunday, 10:00am-12:00pm. I
want them to fill in their names in the form fields and click
submit for any shift they want. That means I would need the
multiple forms action.
I will have each shift listed with an iFrame next to it
displaying a text file that will be written to by Forms To Go,
after they fill in their names and click the submit button by the
appropriate shift. After they click submit, the redirect page
will thank them and give them a link to return to the sign-up
page, which will, hopefully, refresh the page so that the newly
updated text file for that shift will be displayed. If not, I
will also have instructions to refresh the browser page if their
names don’t show up.
It means many text files and many form processors, and that’s
okay, as long as it works. This is a rough image of what I’m
thinking:
http://webflunky.com/TEST/signup.jpg
Robin Stark
Robin Stark
Web Flunky
www.webflunky.com
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