Keeping values across several pages:

Try to avoid the cookie route. I get more problems than solutions with cookies, especially with sites that have a lot of AOLer's and/or WebTV users as customers.

Here are the questions I ask myself when I have a form that spans several pages.

- Is it important that the user not be able do see the information they entered previously?
If you don't care if the user sees previous answers, you can stick these variables into hidden fields on the next form page. This means that you don't do any writes to your database/table until the user has completed the whole process.

   # Generate hidden fields from previous form
   
   # List all field names here
   @keepers = qw( first_name last_name address );
   
   # Flip through %fields hash where you have inputs
   # stored, and stick them into a hidden fields
   foreach (@keepers){
      $hidden.="<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"$_\" value=\"$fields{$_}
+\"> \n";
      }

   # Stick the $hidden variable anywhere inside the <FORM>
   # tags of the next page
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   # For this kind of operation, I like
   # to use a fast tie hash, especially
   # if there is a lot of traffic

   use DB_File;
   $records = tie %stuff, 'DB_File', "entries.dat", O_CREAT|O_RDWR,066
+6;
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I hope this has helped more than muddied the question.

Richard
Oakbox

Definitely the big question is, are you allowing partially-filled-out forms to be submitted?

I usually am against that sort of thing. It's kind of messy, but I would have each successive form get filled up with hidden form fields containing names and values from the previous form, and wait until the final step before submitting anything.

Also I love using static html pages, it keeps the html out of your perl and that is a good thing!

Humble initiate,
mr.dunstan

If Form A calls Form B calls Form C, then have the form handler for Form A do its processing and then generate Form B before it exits. Similarly, the form handler for Form B should do its processing and then generate Form C before it exits.

I would not combine the form handlers for two dissimilar pages in the same script.

However, if two pages are similar then I call them both using the same form handler. I use CGI.pm's referer() (sic, only three r's in the CGI.pm spelling) function to see which page called the form, and then have the form modify its processing accordingly.

Thanks guys this help

if so how do I go about saving all the variables

I hope I've answered the question sufficiently, if not just ask again.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention(though as sifmole said) check out some of the modules on CPAN, and read CGI.pm's docs for form generation tips, etc.

If you set a hidden form variable differently in each html file you can create a state machine. Each form could include two lines like this:

<input name="mode" value="form1">
<input name="history" value="HISTORYBUF">
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use strict;
use CGI;
use MIME::Base64;

my $q = new CGI;
my $mode = $q->param("mode");
if ($mode eq "form1") { &validateform1; }
elsif ...
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The history variable would contain a string resulting from packing a hash of the previous page's form variables. You unpack this hash, add the current page's variables to it, and repack.

When you are done processing the form, read the next html template file from disk and replace the phrase HISTORYBUF with the history string. This should accumulate all the pages' form variables, that is if you guarantee they all use unique names.

It is possible to do away with packing and unpacking by just putting the bare word HISTORYBUF in without a surrounding input tag, and replacing that keyword with a whole list of input tags you generate on the spot.

But if you are going to pack a hash into a variable (called serializing), you could use the popular Storable module which lets you freeze structures for transport and then thaw them out. You also probably want to make sure the variable doesn't include any nasty characters by using MIME Base 64 encoding.

use Storable;

# unpack history from form, and add latest form's settings
my %formhash = %{ thaw(
   decode_base64( $q->param("history"))
                        ) };
foreach $p ($q->params) { $formhash{$p}=$q->param($p}; }

# meat of program

# pack back up.  $template contains template file contents.
my $frozen = encode_base64( freeze \%formhash ); # someone check this 
+pls
$template =~ s/HISTORYBUF/$frozen/;
print $template; # do a "print $q->header" at top
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When I've used this method I haven't serialized the data, but it should work.

Anyway there are many ways to do it as usual in Perl. You could also make a series of Perl programs with embedded html and which just load the previous page's form variables and don't worry about serialization of the data.