HTML form is not sending $_POST values

Question 1

I am trying to create a form creator in PHP. This is one of them very silly "need another look" problems. I know this form should work but it just isn't sending any $_POST values at all. Here is the code.

<form method="post" action="http://projects.zesty-designs.co.uk/orderform" class="generatedform">
<label>Ebay Username</label><br />
<input type="text" name="ebay_username" value="" /><br />
<label>Email Address</label><br />
<input type="text" name="email_address" value="" /><br />
<label>Full Name</label><br />
<input type="text" name="full_name" value="" /><br />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" /><input type="reset" value="Start Again" />
</form>

Here is the live link if anyone wants to try it out. http://projects.zesty-designs.co.uk/orderform.

Question 2

Looks like most of the comments are correct.

It seems that the URL that is sending the information requires a trailing slash / or a reference to the direct file.

Thanks for the responses.

Question 3

The good news is that PHP and JavaScript have a similar idea about what values are true and false.

An empty string will be false on both sides. A string with something in it (except 0 in PHP) will be true on both sides.
The number 0 will be false on both sides. All other numbers will be true on both sides.

Since the values of a form will always be strings, as Quentin pointed out in his answer, a good practice might be to use an empty string as false value and something else (e.g. 'true') as true value. But I think your way of using 0 and 1 and testing the numerical values is the safest approach because it isn't misleading. (When someone sees 'true' they might think 'false' would also be usable for a false value.

Question 4

This code is working. You need to add some condition, that checks, if $username is posted or not.

Something like that:

if(count($_POST)){
    $username ='';
    if(isset($_POST['user'])){
        $username = $_POST['user'];
    if ($username==null || !$username)
         echo 'username is null';
     echo strlen($username);
     echo $username;
   }

 }

Question 5

Remove enctype="text/plain" from the form tag, PHP doesn't support it.

See: method="post" enctype="text/plain" are not compatible?

Question 6

The problem is that during the first render, users is the useState hook's initial value, which is null. The value only changes after the axios.get() request finishes, which is after the initial render. This means that the the default values passed to useForm is null.

The documentation for defaultValues says the following:

defaultValues are cached on the first render within the custom hook. If you want to reset the defaultValues, you should use the reset api.

So, you'll just need to use reset to reset the form manually to the values which you fetch. The documentation for reset says the following:

You will need to pass defaultValues to useForm in order to reset the Controller components' value.

However, it's unclear from the documentation whether null is enough as the defaultValues, or if you need to pass it a proper object with fields for each input. To play it safe, let's assume it's the latter.

The code for doing this would look something like this:

function LoginFile() {
  const [users, setUsers] = useState({ email: "", firstname: "" });

  const { register, handleSubmit, errors, reset } = useForm({
    defaultValues: users,
  });

  useEffect(() => {
    axios.get("http://localhost:4000/users/1").then((res) => {
      setUsers(res.data);
      reset(res.data);
    });
  }, [reset]);

  useEffect(() => {
    console.log(users);
  }, [users]);

  return (
    <div>
      <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>
        Email <input type="email" name="email" ref={register} />
        <br />
        firstname <input name="firstname" ref={register} />
        <br />
        <input type="submit" />
      </form>
    </div>
  );
}

Additionally, if the only reason for the useState hook is to store the value for defaultValues, you don't need it at all and can clean up the code to be:

function LoginFile() {
  const { register, handleSubmit, errors, reset } = useForm({
    defaultValues: { email: "", firstname: "" },
  });

  useEffect(() => {
    axios.get("http://localhost:4000/users/1").then((res) => {
      reset(res.data);
    });
  }, [reset]);

  return (
    <div>
      <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>
        Email <input type="email" name="email" ref={register} />
        <br />
        firstname <input name="firstname" ref={register} />
        <br />
        <input type="submit" />
      </form>
    </div>
  );
}

HTML form is not sending $_POST values

Answers

php,html,forms,post