Pre-populating an HTML Form with Data from Another HTML Form

[ambassador]

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May 17, 2005

Here is the scenario.

A simple HTML form exists on web page 1 (a static HTML page).
Another HTML form exists on web page 2 (a static HTML page).
The form on page 2 has several fields also found on the page 1 form.
Both forms have a simple HTML submit button.


The question.

If both forms have input fields for 'name' and 'address' and the website viewer enters their name and address on the page 1 form first, how do you pre-populate the page 2 form with the viewers name and address so they do not have to re-enter the same information?


Ambassador
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[ADAM Web Design]

I can't think of a good way to retrieve the information for the second form bia any means other than to use server-side programming.

Here's a quick and not-optimized ASP sample for the second form:

<%
Dim Customer_Name
Customer_Name = trim (Request.Form ("Customer_Name")
%>
<input type="hidden" name="Customer_Name" value="<% = Customer_Name %>" />

This would vary depending on which server-side programming language you used.

There would be a way to do this using Javascript, but then you'd have to rely on people enabling it.

[webmasterjunkie]

If a relative URL is used in:
<form method="POST" action="">
Instead of:
<form method="POST" action="http://ww8.website.com">:
Then $variable replacements may be used on the next page to fill in what your visitor typed on the previous page.

Form1
<input type="text" name="first">

Form2
<input type="text" name="first" value="$first">

That should take care of the issue, of course you should validate the fields to ensure that they are filled out.

[ambassador]

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Jun 19, 2005

Thank you webmasterjunkie.

Ambassador
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