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One of the most powerful features of PHP is the way it handles HTML
forms.
First, we make the form page, a PHP script with a form in
it (could also be a regular HTML) . Example "my_form.phtml":
<![CDATA[
<?
echo <<<form_text_region
<form action="action.php" method="POST">
Your name: <input type="text" name="name" /><p>
Your age: <input type="text" name="age" /><p>
<input type="submit">
</form>
form_text_region;
?>
]]>
When the user fills in this form and
hits the submit button, the action.php page is called:
<![CDATA[
Hi <?php echo $_POST["name"]; ?>.
You are <?php echo $_POST["age"]; ?> years old.
// Output of this script may be:
//Hi Joe. You are 22 years old.
]]>
The $_POST["name"] and $_POST["age"] variables are automatically set.
If we used the method GET then the
form information would live in the $_GET autoglobal instead.
You may also use the $_REQUEST autoglobal which contains
both post and get variables
or the import_request_variables() function.
Get versus Post
The difference between "get" and "post" is that the "post" method
transparently passes along all the information the page has gathered,
whereas the "get" method will pass all that info along as part of the
URL.
Get is useful for debuging, because you see which variables with
what values you pass to a page and you may set the variables to pass
with an external script of by hand (not necessarily with a given form).
Data passed with GET is limited in size.
Post is useful to hide variables and their values (e.g., from hidden inputs).