How to pre populate my custom form in magento - magento

Question

I've created a custom form, similar to a customer registration form, in Magento.
i want to prepopulate this form when an error messages arises.
Does anyone know how I can prepopulate a custom form in Magento?

Answer 1

Without seeing you code it is hard to say which method will method will work, but one of these method should work.
Using JavaScript Validation - client side validate, only post if all require info is correct
<form name="my-form" id="my-form" method="post">
<label for="username">
< ?php echo $this->__("User name") ?> <span>*</span></label><br />
<input type="text" id="username" name="username" class="input-text required-entry"/>
.....
</form>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
//< ![CDATA[
var customForm = new VarienForm('my-form');
//]]>
</script>
See a list of all the validation class name
Repopulate field
To get a list of all the post variable information that the customer fill out
Mage::app()->getRequest()->getPost();
To get a form field (eg. <input type='text' name='firstname' ... />)
Mage::app()->getRequest()->getPost('firstname');
So in you .phtml try (this will not work if you doing a redirect on error)
<input type='text' name='firstname' value="<?php echo Mage::app()->getRequest()->getPost('firstname');?>" />
If the above doesnt work then you need the save the post info into a session.
In your controller if validation fail save the information to customer session
Mage::getSingleton( 'customer/session' )->setData( 'yourFormName', Mage::app()->getRequest()->getPost() );
In your phtml template, print the data if 'yourFormName' variable session exist.