Passing a POST variable to a new window

Renegade posted this at 20:32 — 25th November 2007.

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

Hey guys,

Is there anyway or passing a POST form variable to a new window? Tried googling for it but my googling skills suck...

Haven't played around with Javascript for a while, can it even be done?

Can't give a link because it's an internal site I'm working on.

calculator posted this at 21:16 — 25th November 2007.

They have: 40 posts

Joined: Nov 2007

Hi Renegade,

You can use a server side script (PHP, ASP etc...) to retrieve data passed from a 'post' method.

On page 1:

<form action="page2.php" method="post">
<p><label for="name">Name:</label><input type="text" name="name" id="name" /></p>
</form>

On page 2 before the Doctype:

<?php
if(isset($_POST['name'])){
   $myFromVar = $_POST['name'];
}
?>

and wherever you want the data to appear on page 2:
<?php echo $myFromVar ; ?>'

You should also check that the data that is passed is of the right format by 'cleaning' it. Ie. if you have a drop down menu called 'color' with only 3 values (blue, red, green), I would do something like:

<?php
if(isset($_POST['color'])){
     switch($_POST['color']){
          case 'blue':
          case 'red':
          case 'green:
                $myColor = $_POST['color'];
                break;
          default:
                exit('Error');
      }
}
?>

Renegade posted this at 01:54 — 26th November 2007.

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

Oh yes, that's about what I did but, the new window is not picking up anything:

This is more or less what I have at the moment:
tools.php

<form action="javascript: fnOpenWin('redirect.php?action=connectionhistory');" method="post">
username: <input type="text" name="username" /><br />
<input type="submit" value="search" />
</form>

js.js

function fnOpenWin(url) {
window.open(url);
}

redirect.php

if($_GET['action'] == "connectionhistory") {
$url = "http://www.example.com/tools.php?username=" .  $_POST['username'];
}

Doing an echo of $url just gives me "http://www.example.com/tools.php?username=" so for some reason, the post variable is not being passed.

pr0gr4mm3r posted this at 05:12 — 26th November 2007.

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

If you already Googled it and didn't find any help, it may not be possible. The browser is probably not posting the information because you have a script in it's place, and not a web page.

Some alternatives:

Send the username in the URL as a $_GET field.
If you have other fields other than a username, submit the form to a PHP file using AJAX, make that script store the $_POST data to the $_SESSION, open the popup, and then retrieve that data from the $_SESSION.

calculator posted this at 12:30 — 26th November 2007.

They have: 40 posts

Joined: Nov 2007

Hi Renegade,

How about:

tools.php

<form action="redirect.php?action=connectionhistory" method="post" target="_blank">

or xhtml strict compliant:
in the separate js.js file

window.onload = function() {
	if(document.getElementById('myform')){
		var myform = document.getElementById("myform");
		myform.target= "_blank";
	}		
}//end window.onload

'
and in tools.php
<form action="redirect.php?action=connectionhistory" method="post" id="myform">'

You could also make the target ="_blank" a window.open with sizing capabilities quite easily by passing the href var to js if you need to.

Renegade posted this at 18:11 — 26th November 2007.

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

Oh cool, thanks for that Calculator, I solved it by using target="_blank" didn't even know you could do that with forms...