In the script below, you will see a value that is submitted in the form titled "shorturl." Ultimately I would like to take that value and use it to generate a unique URL that displays all of the submitted data from the form.
Here is the form where a user will submits the data:
<html>
<body>
<p>Required fields are <b>bold</b></p>
<form action="contact.php" method="post">
<p><b>Author's Name:</b> <input type="text" name="author" /><br />
<p>Company Name: <input type="text" name="company" /><br />
<p>Address:<br /><textarea name="address" rows="5" cols="40"></textarea></p>
<p>Phone Number: <input type="text" name="phone" /><br />
<b>Title:</b> <input type="text" name="title" /><br />
<p><b>One Word Description:</b> <input type="text" name="shorturl" /><br />
<p><b>Full Description:</b><br />
<textarea name="comments" rows="10" cols="40"></textarea></p>
<p><input type="submit" value="submit"></p>
<p> </p>
</form>
</body>
</html>
The next bit of code is the contact.php page that will output the user data:
<?php
/* Check all form inputs using check_input function */
$author = check_input($_POST['author'], "Enter your name");
$company = check_input($_POST['company']);
$address = check_input($_POST['address']);
$phone = check_input($_POST['phone']);
$shorturl = check_input($_POST['shorturl'], "Provide a single word description");
$title = check_input($_POST['title'], "Write a title");
$comments = check_input($_POST['comments'], "Provide a full description");
/* Functions we used */
function check_input($data, $problem='')
{
$data = trim($data);
$data = stripslashes($data);
$data = htmlspecialchars($data);
if ($problem && strlen($data) == 0)
{
show_error($problem);
}
return $data;
}
function show_error($myError)
{
?>
<html>
<body>
<b>Please correct the following error:</b><br />
<?php echo $myError; ?>
</body>
</html>
<?php
exit();
}
?>
<head>
<title><?php echo $_POST['title']; ?></title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<b><?php echo $_POST['title']; ?></b><br>
Created by:<br>
<?php echo $_POST['author']; ?><br>
<?php echo $_POST['company']; ?><br>
Contact: <br>
<?php echo $_POST['phone']; ?><br>
<?php echo $_POST['address']; ?><br>
Flyer Description: <br>
<?php echo $_POST['comments']; ?><br>
</p>
</body>
</html>
As you will see if you run this form, the function is pretty basic. Here is where I need the assistance. In the initial form the "shorturl" value is taken. The function of the shorturl value is as follows:
If this form was hosted on examplesite.com, then I would ultimately like for the form that is created to be available with submitted answers at examplesite.com/shorturl
First of all, how do I verify that this is in fact a single word via PHP? If a user submits the shorturl value as "House" then I need the form to return the value as true, but if the user submits "Big House" then the value is false and they need to alter the value to something that is acceptable such as "BigHouse"
Secondly, I need to verify that the shorturl value is unique to the site. In other words, once a shorturl has been used, that value needs to be sent to the MySQL database so that it will not be replicated by another user. To continue our example, if someone already had "House" as their shorturl value then the full URL of examplesite.com/House is already taken. Then if a new user comes and tries to use "House" the submission will produce an error message that says the name is taken.
And finally, how do I get all of this information to auto-generate a unique webpage with the form results? For an example let's continue examplesite.com/House Right now, when a user submits the form, the data is displayed on examplesite.com/contact.php. How do I generate a URL which would display the form data and be unique as defined by the shorturl and be viewable to a third party site visitor without submitting new data?
Wow. I hope that all makes sense.
I know there are several questions in here, so if you can only assist with one step that is fine. If you can tackle this entire issue then more power to you :)
I have done a fair amount of research on this and I am thinking that the first 2 questions should be able to be solved with PHP, but the third might involve a mod_rewrite function of some sort. I cannot thank you enough for getting this far with my query and many many thanks if you can provide a solution.
