Beginner PHP Tutorial - 71 - Working with Form Data Video Lecture | PHP for Absolute Beginners: From Novice to PHP Master - Web Development

hello this is Alex from PHP academy' org
and this is another video tutorial for
the new Boston now in this tutorial
we're going to be talking or rather in
this short tutorial series we've got get
variable the post variable and we're
also talking about requests which will
be something later on when we've
understood about forms in general this
first tutorial is going to talk about
HTML forms we're going to go sort of
back to basics and how we use them in
different elements of them that allow us
to process data through PHP or send data
to a page rather now I'm going to be
using this at this example on for the
same page but when you do post data you
can either post it to the same page that
you're on currently or you can post it
to another page now if you don't
understand what I'm talking about that's
absolutely fine I will begin to create
my HTML form and I'll explain each
element of the form as we go along we're
not actually going to be doing any PHP
programming necessarily in this video
okay so the first thing we do when we
specify a form is the start and the end
tag of the form we also specify an
action and a method now the action is
where this form is going to submit when
a submit button is clicked so we include
a submit button on our form this will be
inside here a bit later on now the first
thing we do like I said is we we declare
the all the action sorry yet with the
action first so in this case I own the
action to link back to this same page
and this page is called index.php you
can see this shown here and up here as
well so we've got form action equals
index dot PHP when a submit button is
clicked the form will then submit any
data that is inside of it to this same
page and then we can start to process
this data inside our PHP tags the method
can either be get or post depending on
how you're submitting the variables now
a little about either of them get is
basically sending the data and
it's visible in the URL and it's sending
the variables through a the format of
the URL post sends data through the HTTP
POST method so they're slightly
different I'm not going to talk about
them quite yet but I'm going to use get
just to show you an example in this in
this tutorial so what do we want to do
first the first thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to enter some input fields so
I'm going to say day and I'm going to
create an input type or an input tag so
on its own it would look like this and
the type is going to be text the name of
it is essentially what you're naming it
in regards to a variable this will be
submitted and we can pick it up using
the collection of get variables which is
almost like an associative array so the
name of this I'm going to call is day
now what I'm going to do is I'm going to
break down and I'm going to say date
input type equals text name equals date
so we're calling it something different
we're breaking down again and we're
saying year so input type equals text
name equals year we break down a couple
more times just to keep everything neat
and I'm going to create a button in fact
let's just see how this looks at the
moment let's refresh okay so we've got
day date and year in actual fact just to
make things a bit tidier I'm going to
break in between each one of these as
well so that is looking like that
so if essentially created our form
already we just need a button like I
said earlier down here and that's input
type of submit and the value of that is
what just what is what is displayed so
if I get rid of this here and I refresh
you can see it says just as submit some
browsers it will default to submit
request but I can specify
by anything here you can see that that
will just create to look like anything
what they'll create with the capitalized
text anything so I'm just going to call
this submit okay so now what's going to
happen is if you watch by default my
browser doesn't show the index dot PHP
page in its URL however I was to click
on submit like I said earlier we've
supplied the action of this form to go
to index dot PHP so when I click on it
you'll notice the URL up here changes
and we've also included a few variables
we've got day date and the year so the
way this works is after the page name
itself which is here in blue we have a
question mark and after this we specify
our variables so the name of the
variable is day and that is equal to
something at the moment is nothing and
then we say and with an ampersand symbol
we say date is equal to something here
at the moment it's equal to nothing and
then again the year is equal to
something here which at the moment it's
equal to nothing so here for example I
type Monday I tote 31st and I took 2011
and I click Submit if you look at the
top of the page you can see that the URL
has changed and in actual fact day is
equal to Monday data is equal to 31st
and the year is equal to 2011 so now we
have submitted what's called get
variables through PHP using a form so
that's how to create a form and submit
them however we want to actually do
something with them now in the next
tutorial we're going to be looking at
get variables and how we should use them
and why we should use them and then in
the other tutorial going to look at post
variables and again the same how we use
them why we use them so this has been
basically how to create the form and
submitting the variables and so we can
use them eventually in PHP