Mandatory fields in a form (formmail)

[aventvoy]

Hello,
I would like a few fields on a form (formMail) to become mandatory and a page to pop up if one field is not filled.
Could someone help me on this? for instance on

<td width="142">Name</td>
<td width="118"><input name="name" type="text" id="name"></td>
<td width="142">Address</td>
<td width="118"> <input name="adresse" type="text" id="adresse"> </td>

I have tried different formulas, looked for the same question here... Couldn't get it to work...

Thanks a lot!

[aventvoy]

Hmmm...
Either the question is too stupid, or nobody knows the answer...
Thanks for the help

[ADAM Web Design]

It's not too stupid a question. The problem with it is that the answer varies depending on the language you want to use.

It could be done on the server side, using ASP or PHP or .NET or even CGI or Perl. It can also be done using Javascript on the client side.

The reason you can't find a formula is because there is no set formula. It's going to depend on your form and the type of validation you want.

For example, in ASP your form validation might look something like this:

Dim Some_Field
Some_Field = Request.Form ("Some_Field")
if Some_Field = "" or IsNull (Some_Field) then
    Response.Write "

You left Some_Field blank, jackass.</p>"
end if

Alternatively, in Javascript you might end up with something like this:

var Some_Field = document.Some_Form.Some_Field.value;
if (Some_Tield == '') {
    alert ("You didn't fill out Some_Field, dummy!");
}

This is more of an application question than a syntax question, so you're not likely to get an answer in general terms.

[sysop9999]

It can be done with javascript, but I'm not that much of an expert on that.

I usually do it like this (using ASP):

<form method="POST" action="check.asp">
....
.....rest of the form fields....
.....

And on the check.asp page I run through the form collection to see if any of the fields are missed out, and return an error if this is the case.

like:

<%
dim kon
for each kon in request.form
 if request.form.item(kon) = "" then
%>
error in form - please hit backbutton and fill out all required fields.
<%end if
next
%>
All went well .... have a nice day.

I haven't tried this one though, but that's how I'd perform the task.

[ADAM Web Design]

Gotta love the ASP form collection. I found out about both that and the Execute function 2.5 years ago. Now I have an include file with 2000 lines of precompiled code based on both of those ideas (and other form validation/generation/other stuff), and each of my pages is now about 20 lines.

Sweeeeeeet.