What Is a FORM Variable?

What Is a FORM Variable?

URL variables allow you to interact with Web visitors in a limited fashion. However, the most common and useful method for providing visitors with an interactive experience is through HTML forms. Examples of the usefulness of forms include collecting user information, letting users enter criteria to search a database, giving users the ability to respond to polls, presenting visitors with options for printing reports, and allowing users to select personalization requirements.

It's important to remember that two pages are involved in using FORM variables: form and action. The form page has the HTML form elements on it. After a user enters or chooses her information in the form and submits it, and all this information is passed on to the action page, which then performs actions based on that information.

NOTE

In concept, working with FORM variables is the same as working with URL variables. Both have a display page and a processing page. In a URL scenario, the display page lists all the hypertext links. In a form scenario, the display page is the HTML form. The action page in both scenarios merely takes the variables that are passed to it and uses them to perform some action.

URL variables were introduced in Chapter 8, "URL Variables."