CHAPTER 13

Creating and Using Forms

To create a fully functional web application, you need to be able to interact with your users. The common way to receive information from web users is through a form. Forms have evolved to be quite all-encompassing. Over time, savvy web developers have taken the elements available to them through the form interface and figured out ways to accomplish pretty much any goal.

On the surface, web forms are merely Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) elements. The way that the elements are processed, however, relies on the processing script that will take care of the elements. PHP 5 is built so that it seamlessly integrates with form elements. Over the past few versions of PHP, its methodology for dealing with form information has gradually evolved and is now quite robust.