Save form inputs to a text file

General PHP Help
#6

Sorry, I typed it quickly and had the slashes backwards… Getting old, memory going… LOL

So, two things… You did save the file as a PHP file not HTML, correct? Also, did you fix the < FORM > tag to point to itself and you might need to alter the PHP code to check for the submit button. Do you know how to DEBUG this? You can check the inputs from the posted form if needed. Something like this would work:

<?PHP
die("<pre>".print_r($_POST,1)."</pre>");
?>

This should show you all of the posted fields from your < form >. If there is data in there, you can see what was actually sent to you and adjust your code as needed. Or, you can create a test file and post it here and we can help you solve where it is failing. But, it appears most of it is working. It seems you are just not getting the data sent back from the form.

#7

Which file did you mean I should put this code into?
I put it into the page with the form, and also into the YourFileNameHere.txt file (which I renamed to end .php)
In both cases, the result is:
Array
(
)
If you want to look at my file in action it is live at:
https://personality.co.uk/psf1/M/usercode1/admin/createx.php

#8

So, your sample page shows it is a PHP file. That is fine.
Next, in that page near the top use the code I posted and verify if you are getting data from the form. This should be after just above the < body > tag because you are not checking if the form is actually posted. Loosely, something like this:

<?PHP
die("<pre>".print_r($_POST,1)."</pre>");
$text_data = "TEXT-HERE Category : " . $_POST["category"] . " TEXT-HERE" . "\r\n";
$text_data .= "TEXT-HERE Title : "  . $_POST["title"] . " TEXT-HERE" . "\r\n";
$text_data .= "TEXT-HERE Subtitle : " . $_POST["subtitle"] . " TEXT-HERE" . "\r\n";
$text_data .= "TEXT-HERE Status : " . $_POST["status"] . " TEXT-HERE" . "\r\n";
file_put_contents("../../a/YourFileNameHere.txt", $text_data);
header("success.php");
?>

Instead of creating the file, it will stop and show you what is inside your form’s posted data!
Review it and see if you are actually getting the data in your form.

BEFORE YOU DO THAT! I reviewed your live site you posted. You have two bad lines of code on it.
To verify this, go to your page, RIGHT-CLICK on a blank area and select VIEW-SOURCE-PAGE and you will see the HTML code after the PHP is done creating it. You will see that it has two bad errors on the page. The first one is that you are sending code out before the HTML page. It is a < style > tag and it should be inside your < head > tags. The other is a missing < /div > tag just after the container tag.
Fix these FIRST. This might be causing the FORM to fail. Hope this helps…
(One other comment, you code uses more than one form and you do not test which form is being submitted, so that might be another issue at some point. )

#9

Thanks ErnieAlex. Could you kindly look at my page now to see if I fixed the 2 problems you mentioned?
(1) the file is still being written without any field values in it, but I notice that after clicking the SUBMIT button, the page reloads with the following URL: https://personality.co.uk/psf1/M/usercode1/admin/createx.php?category=_c1&title=&subtitle=&status=_PY
– those are the 2 inputs I wanted written to file!
– I also wanted the 2 selects to be written to file
(2) you say I have 2 forms on my page, but if I search for ‘form’ in my source code, only Line 23 (<form action="" method=“POST”>) and Line 90 (</form>) are found. Where is the 2nd form?

#10

Well, did you view the source of the new version? On line #50, you have a bad DIV.
Notice at the end of it you have an incorrectly placed semi-colon. like ";> Remove it.
Then, try and see if it works.

#11

ALSO, around line 127, you have a < span > tag, but, you never END that tag. < /span >
Therefore, another errors.

Lastly, you have two forms on this page. One opens, then, closes and then another closes.
You are missing the second open for the form. Therefore, nothing would ever be posted.
( Third thing to fix . ) Should work after you fix these three errors.

#12

OK, I fixed the ";> I can now see the URL on reload is:
https://personality.co.uk/psf1/M/usercode1/admin/createx.php?category=_c1&title=tttt&subtitle=ssss&status=_PY
which is including all 4 of the values I want written.
But they’re not in the file that is written.

Also, some code I have got from a google search which I put at the end of the file as follows:
<?php echo “TEST CODE”;
if ($_SERVER[“REQUEST_METHOD”] == “POST”) {
// collect value of input field
$name = $_REQUEST[‘status’];
echo "THIS IS STATUS VALUE ";
echo $name;}
?>
only shows TEST CODE but not THIS IS STATUS VALUE or the value in status!

#13

So, you don’t want to fix it? You just want to add some random code at the end of the file?

DID you read the other post with the other two errors in it?

#14

Also, this area:

<b>(2) GIVE YOUR POST A TITLE <i></b>

Opens a < b > tag and opens a < i > tag and closes a < b > tag… That is wrong, too !

#15

You ask “DID you read the other post”. The answer is, I didn’t see it, only now that I look back can I see it. Maybe my age, or maybe I started answering the one before and didn’t see the 2nd one arrive!
I think I have fixed all the errors you have pointed out.
I have also deleted the random code you referred to – that wasn’t intended to fix anything, just to help understand what was going on. Anyway, it’s now removed, so is moot.
The main thing is I cannot find the “unopened 3rd /form” you refer to.
I have copied the source code into a text editor, and searching for the word “form” only shows one <form> (<form action="" method=“POST”>) and one </form> at the end of the file, just before </body></html>

Can you tell me what is the code which immediately follows the "unopened 3rd </form>" to help me find it?
PS It is now 0:36am in the UK, so I will look for your answer tomorrow morning.
Thank you again. Philip

#16

Well, the extra form tag is now gone. But, you still have an error on your page.
RIGHT-CLICK on it, select VIEW-SOURCE and you will see the results AFTER the PHP had rendered the page and sent it to the browser. ( You will NOT see any PHP code there of course! )

Now, if you look at the page this way, you will see that there is still an extra semi-colon on one DIV line.
( At about line #50. ) Fix that and then let us know if it is working. If not, I will explain how to send me the file as a personal message so that I can review the live page instead of parts of it.

Also, what editor are you using? It does not indent lines very good and it is hard to read your code.
There are lots of editors out there. I use Netbeans which is free and shows up errors right away…

#17

I believe I have now fixed the extra semi-colon, but the file is still being saved without any content except the text, so please tell me how to send you the file.

Regarding the editor, I am on MacOS (13.3) using BBEdit. I will investigate using “better” editor/IDEs such as NetBeans.

#18

The reason you have no $_POST data is because you copy/pasted the following line, which wasn’t posted as code, so you ended up with some smart-curly quotes, which have no special meaning in a browser -

Delete and re-type the smart-curly quotes as straight ascii quotes and an empty action="" attribute is not valid html5. To get a form to submit to the same page using valid html5, leave the entire action attribute out of the form tag.

#19

Good catch PHDR !

And, Stowman, all the other errors are gone now. Show fix what PHDR mentioned and let us know if it works. PHPstorm and Netbeans are two good editors to look at. I use Netbeans and am happy with it. Others here like PHPstorm, too. Netbeans is free.

#20

That fixed it. I replaced the curly quotes and now the save works.
The only part of the code that didn’t work is the redirect to a file called ‘success.php’ when the Submit is completed.
I discovered in StackOveflow that header() redirects don’t work above PHP5.6, and I am using PHP7.2
I replaced it with echo '<script>window.location = "success.php";</script>';
and now it works.

#21

Well, you are wrong. Header works in my 7.2. I suspect you spelled it incorrectly.
If it is on a live server, you might need to add the http: to the address. But, it works fine in 7.2.
It would be spelled like this:

header("Location: success.php");
#22

But the code you gave me earlier (8/21 14 Nov) was:
file_put_contents("…/…/a/YourFileNameHere.txt", $text_data);
header(“success.php”);
No mention of Location: in the header(“success.php”)

#23

Sorry, either I mistyped it or copied and pasted it wrong. Sorry for that!

#24

The redirect upon successful completion of post method form processing code should be to the exact same url of the current page. This will cause a get request for that page, which will prevent the browser from trying to re-submit the form data if the page gets reloaded or browsed away from and back to.

The redirect code goes inside the post method form processing code, which should first detect if a post method from has been submitted. Your current form page always redirects.

Any redirecting you do needs a php exit; statement after it to stop php code execution.

Generally, the lack of a failure message indicates success. If you want to display a one-time success message, store it in a session variable, then on each page load, test, display, and clear the session variable at the appropriate location in the html document. If you want the visitor to be able to go to a different page after that, provide navigation links to do so.

As to the various html markup mistakes, you should always validate the resulting html of a page at validator.w3.org

1 Like
#25

I only use forms to collect homework.

Before I learned to mark the homework directly using PHP/MySQL, I used to collect the form data as text, download the text files once a week and mark them using Python.

For writing the form data to text I used this:

$body = "
Studentnr = ".$studentnr."
".$q1."
".$q2."
".$q3."
".$q4."
";

$path = "/home/mywebpage/public_html/19BEhw/php/uploads/";
$time = microtime($get_as_float = false);
$newname = $studentnr . "_19BEsW10_" . $time;
$fp = fopen($path . $newname, 'w');
fwrite($fp, $body);
fclose($fp);
//echo ' 成功！ Your data has been saved 1 time in a text file! <br><br> ';

Nowadays, PHP marks the answers and writes them all to a table! Progress!

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