Codeigniter: Pass form variable into URI - codeigniter

Not sure if this can be done but it seems my main issue is because i have a default route to a method called "index." I want to be able to list all users tagged with a specific keyword. In addition, users can search for other users based on these keywords.
i.e.
www.domain.com/tags/apples
www.domain.com/tags/oranges
www.domain.com/tags/blueberry
It works fine if I go to the URL manually. I'm having issues getting it to work with a form field.
Snippet of the form_open:
<?=form_open('tags/');?>
<p>Search for Tag: <input type="text" name="tag" /></p>
<p><input type="submit" value="Search" /></p>
Here's a snippet of my controller:
function index() {
$data['result'] = $this->tags_model->searchByTag($this->uri->segment(2));
$this->load->view('tags_view', $data);
}
Here's a snippet of my router:
$route['tags'] = "tags/index";
$route['tags/(:any)'] = "tags/index/$1";
Now, I can easily fix all this if I have a method called search, but I don't want the URL to show up as www.domain.com/tags/search/orange.

When you create your form you set it to use POST variables instead of GET, that way they don't go through the url, that's codeigniter's default method for forms.
So your form_open code will generate the following code:
<form method="post" action="tags/" />
If you want them to got through url though, call the form opener this way instead:
form_open('tags/', array('method' => 'get'));
The same applies to any other attributes you want to specify for the form, just follow the same pattern attribute_name => attribute_value inside the array.
More info on the user guide

The problem here is that your form will be submitting all it's data to "/tags", with nothing trailing it, as POST data doesn't come in as part of the URL. Even if it was a GET request however, I don't think that CodeIgniter will take anything out of the querystring and use it as part of the routing segments.
I think what you should do is have a small Javascript function that automatically updates the form action parameter to be tags/<select option value> whenever the select value is changed. This way it will submit to the right place. In order to handle non-javascript enabled browsers, you could have a default action called tags/search that would simply analyze your form data and put out a 301 redirect to the proper tags/<location> once you'd figured it out.
It seems like a bit of overkill here however, as you could really point the form at tags/index and not worry about it. I'm not sure search engines index form submission locations, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't index a form that submits to dynamic URIs in the way that you want it to. You could still link to the search result pages using tags/apples, etc, but the form could work quite normally just by going to tags/index.

I ended up redirecting the URL and passed the keyword into the URI.
i.e. domain.com/tags/view/

Related

Passing data from one view to another in Laravel

I have a Controller that parses an XML and returns a view with a list of names and URLs.
return view('view_1',compact('myList'));
View_1 will have a form with parameters method="POST" action="goToView_2"
Then I get some information from my view_2 through a POST, but I still want to keep $myList so that view_2 view uses it aswell.
How do I pass $myList from the first view to the next through a controller?
It sounds like you're trying to have multi-step form of some kind.
I would store the data in the session and easily access it in the second controller or in the view (although not recommended).
https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/session#using-the-session
PS. I personally love using the global session helper.

Php session variable instead of GET method

I have a form that has name, Id, address etc. It needs to refresh after user enters the ID inorder to query and retrieve other information such as major based the entered ID.
Once it refreshes, I retrieve back the entered values via Get method so to retain the entered form values.
Shown below
<?php
$_SESSION['Bid']=#$_GET['Bid'];
$_SESSION['Stufname']=$_GET['fname'];
$_SESSION['Stulname']=$_GET['lname'];
?>
<form name="form1" method="post" action="registration.php" >
<input type="text" name="Bid" value="<?php echo $_SESSION['Bid'];?>"
MAXLENGTH=9 size="9">
</form>
All works fine but i know GET method is unsecure since the variables are now shown in the URL and I want to get away from using get.
I tried session variable in other scripts but in this case, because the page refreshes after entering ID, I am not really sure how to capture and store the form values in the session variables on page refresh without using the GET method as I did above.
Any help would be appreciated.
thanks,
You can use POST rather. You'll be able to figure out the syntax from here: http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_post.asp but I'd recommend doing more research before posting a question.

Django Forms - Processing GET Requests

We have an existing Django form that accepts GET requests to allow users to bookmark their resulting query parameters. The form contains many fields, most of which are required. The form uses semi-standard boilerplate for handling the request, substituting GET for POST:
if request.method == 'GET':
form = myForm(request.GET)
if form.isValid()
# Gather fields together into query.
else
form = myForm()
The problem is that the first time the form is loaded, there's nothing in the GET request to populate the required fields with, so most of the form lights up with 'missing field' errors.
Setting initial values doesn't work; apparently, the non-existent values in the GET request override them.
How can we avoid this? I'm pretty certain we're simply not processing things correctly, but I can't find an example of a form that handles GET requests. We want errors to show up if the user hits the "Submit" button while fields are blank or otherwise invalid, but don't want these errors showing up when the form is initially displayed.
The positional argument to the forms.Form subclass informs Django that you intend to process a form rather than just display a blank/default form. Your if request.method == 'GET' isn't making the distinction that you want because regular old web requests by typing a URL in a web browser or clicking a link are also GET requests, so request.method is equal to GET either way.
You need some differentiating mechanism such that you can tell the difference between a form display and a form process.
Ideas:
If your processing is done via. AJAX, you could use if request.is_ajax() as your conditional.
Alternatively, you could include a GET token that signifies that the request is processing. Under this example, first you'd need something in your form:
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="process_form" />
And then you can look for that value in your view:
if 'action' in request.GET and request.GET['action'] == 'process_form':
form = myForm(request.GET)
if form.is_valid():
# form processing code
else:
form = myForm()
I'll also give you the standard, boilerplate point that it's generally preferable not to use GET for form processing if you can help it (precisely because you run into difficulties like this since you're using an anomalous pattern), but if you have a use case where you really need it, then you really need it. You know your needs better than I do. :-)
If your clean page load doesn't have any non form GET params, you can differentiate between a clean page load and a form submit in your view. Instead of the usual
form = YourForm()
if request.POST:
you can do
if request.GET.items():
form = YourForm(request.GET)
if form.is_valid():
...
else:
form = YourForm()
If your clean page load could have other params (eg email link tracking params) you'll need to use the QueryDict methods to test if any of your form params are in the request.
request.GET is and empty dictionary when you first load a clean form. Once you have submitted the form, request.GET will be populated with your fields data, even if the fields contain only empty data.
My first question is this, which I posted as comment:
Why not just use request.POST and the standard way of processing form data?
After considering everything here, perhaps what you are looking for is a way of processing data in your query string to populate a form. You can do that without using request.GET as your form.data.
In my own views, I take advantage of a utility function I created to add initial data to the form from request.GET, but I am not going to share that function here. Here's the signature, though. initial_dict is typically request.GET. model_forms is either a single ModelForm or a list of ModelForm.
def process_initial_data(model_forms, initial_dict):
Nevertheless, I am able to process the form through the standard practice of using request.POST when the form is POSTed. And I don't have to pass around all kinds of information in the URL query string or modify it with JavaScript as the user enters information.

Use CodeIgniter form validation in a view

I have footer view that's included on all my pages which contains a form. I would like to be able to make use of CI's form validation library to validate the form. Is that possible?
Currently the form posts back to the current page using the PHP_SELF environment variable. I don't want to get it to post to a controller because when validation fails it loads the controller name in the address bar, which is not the desired behaviour.
Any suggestions gratefully received.
Thanks,
Gaz
One way, whilst far from ideal, would be to create a "contact" function in every controller. This could be in the form of a library/helper.
CI doesn't natively let you call one controller from another, although I believe there are extensions that enable this.
Another option would be an AJAX call instead, which would allow you to post to a generic controller, validate etc whilst remaining on the current page.
In this use case, I would definitely go for an AJAX call to a generic controller. This allows you to show errors even before submitting in the origin page.
Another way (slightly more complex), involves posting your form data to a generic controller method, passing it a hidden input containing the current URL.
The generic controller method handling your form can then redirect to the page on which the user submitted the form, passing it the validation errors or a success message using flash session variables: $this->session->set_flashdata('errors',validation_errors()) might do the trick (untested)
The good thing about this is that you can use the generic form-handling method for both the ajax case (suppressing the redirect) and the non-ajax case
AJAX would be best, just like everyone else says.
I would redirect the form to one function in one controller, you could make a controller just for the form itself. Then have a hidden value with the return URL. As far as errors go you could send them back with flashdata.
Just remember to never copy paste code, it a bad practice and guarantees bugs.
//make sure you load the proper model
if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE){
// invalid
$redirect = $this->input->post('url');
$this->session->set_flashdata('errors',validation_errors());
redirect($redirect);
} else {
/*
success, do what you want here
*/
redirect('send them where ever');
}

Can I have multiple inputs in a form in CodeIgniter URL?

I know that CodeIgniter already elegantly handles URL's. What I have is a form with multiple elements (date, keyword, location = optional). Is it possible to set up CI to create a URL that looks like:
mysite.com/class/function/date/keyword?
If you are using CodeIgniter's form helper, it sends your form data via POST, so you can't easily have your field's value displayed in the url.
What you could have, though, is a controller method that collects your form data and redirects to the url you want.
If you need further clarification, please let me know.
Yes, you can use the anchor function by passing the relevant info to it.

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