Handling multiple forms with same name hidden fields

coolman0stress · 09-03-2003, 04:01 PM

I've been working on this cgi script and encountered a problem.

Basically, i have a script (Perl CGI) that prints a page with 2 forms both with a submit button and having each a hidden field with the same name, but different value.

The problem is that when ever i press either submit button the hidden field (because of the same name) get's overwritten by what ever hidden field was submitted to the script in the URL (get method).

Rough example script:

Code:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use CGI::Pretty ":standard";

print 
          header,
          start_html,
          start_form({ -method=>"get"}),
               hidden({ -name=>"h", value=>"1"}),
               submit,
          end_form,
          start_form({ -method=>"get"}),
               hidden({ -name=>"h", value=>"2"}),
               submit,
          end_form,
          end_html;

I tried to name the forms the same and such, but just can't seem to be able to avoid the problem.

Any suggestions?

david_ross · 09-03-2003, 04:07 PM

Specify your script name as the action for the form. This will overwrite the default action which will include the query string the script was called with. I'm not used to using the CGI library htat much so post the actual html output (that is the important bit) If what I said is wrong or doesn;t make sense.

coolman0stress · 09-03-2003, 04:23 PM

Better yet, here is the above script in action.

I've also added the script name as the action for the forms. Notice how "h" get's overwritten as soon as you press either button.

coolman0stress · 09-03-2003, 04:51 PM

I think i've come up with a decent solution:
name the hidden fields in a sequential manner (so they all have a different name), then to extract the values, loop, untill you find a submitted param.

So if i have 2 hidden fields "h1" and "h2", etc... then to find that h2 was actually submitted i would loop through with param("h" . $count) untill i find something (with $count incrementing each time).

Well, seems to work, so i'm happy

david_ross · 09-04-2003, 12:39 PM

Sorry I misunderstood what you said.

If you want to preserve it you can add an "-override=>1" value to the tag This stops it taking the value that was submitted.

coolman0stress · 09-04-2003, 01:34 PM

Man, i completely forgot about that attribute!

Hehe