[cstallins]

I've coded the HTML for a form to input some basic stuff, including a dropdown (select) box with five choices. The back-end PHP code is supposed to echo some short text to the screen, depending on which of the five selections the visitor made. I know that, since I have certain settings in my php.ini file, I cannot use the simple form variable names in my PHP code; in the switch statement, I have tried case "a", for example, but it produces an error statement. I have to use the $_POST['variableName'] array to access my form variables. That has worked well for all my form processing until I wrote this select box and switch statement. What I have currently written (see below) at least echos something to the monitor, but no matter which of the five values I select in my dropdown box, pressing the Submit button always returns the first value, "Regular customer", on the processed page. Any ideas why?

I'm running WinXP with Apache.
Thank you for any time and help you can offer.
Curtis

My form select box looks like this:

<td>
<select name="find">
<option value="a">I'm a regular customer</option>
<option value="b">TV advertising</option>
<option value="c">Phone directory</option>
<option value="d">Word of mouth</option>
<option value="e">Other</option>
</select>
</td>


while the processing PHP code looks like this:

<?

(additional code...)

switch($find)
{
case $_POST['a'] :
echo "<p>Regular customer</p>";
break;
case $_POST['b'] :
echo "<p>Customer saw television ad</p>";
break;
case $_POST['c'] :
echo "<p>Customer saw telephone ad</p>";
break;
case $_POST['d'] :
echo "<p>Customer referred by word of mouth</p>";
break;
case $_POST['e'] :
echo "<p>Customer referred by other</p>";
break;
}

(additional code...)

?>

[NeverMind]

yeah you have a very clear mistake , man
you were telling the parser to look for a varibale called 'a' in first case and 'b' in second .. etc
while you should tell the parser something like this :

PHP Code:

switch($_POST['find'])

{

case 'a' :

echo "<p>Regular customer</p>";

break;

case 'b' :

echo "<p>Customer saw television ad</p>";

break;

case 'c' :

echo "<p>Customer saw telephone ad</p>";

break;

case 'd' :

echo "<p>Customer referred by word of mouth</p>";

break;

case 'e' :

echo "<p>Customer referred by other</p>";

break;

} 

try this and it should work ,,
when typing $_POST['whatever'] , it means there is a variable passed via form in POST method called 'whatever' .. in your case it's 'find' ..
and you assume a value in every case ..
so I wrote ( case 'a' ) means if the value of $_POST['find'] is the string 'a' , excute this line ..
hope I was clear

[cstallins]

NeverMind, you were dead on.
Thank you for the great clue. I forgot that select boxes are just another form element, and will require the $_POST (or $_GET) treatment, just like all my other form variables.

Everything is as it should be.
Curtis

Nevermind
Nirvana
Sep. '91