Form handling execution flow in PHP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Form Handling Execution Flow

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple web form where users can enter their name and email. You want to handle the form submission in PHP, check if the form was submitted, and then display a thank you message with the entered data.

🎯 Goal: Build a PHP script that shows a form, checks if the form was submitted, processes the input data, and then displays a thank you message with the user's name and email.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a form with name and email input fields

Use a PHP variable form_submitted to check if the form was submitted

Retrieve the name and email from the $_POST array

Display a thank you message with the submitted name and email

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Forms are everywhere on the web for collecting user data like signups, contact info, and feedback.

💼 Career

Understanding form handling is essential for web developers to create interactive and user-friendly websites.

1

Create the HTML form

Create an HTML form with method="post" and two input fields: name="name" and name="email". Also add a submit button with type="submit".

PHP

Need a hint?

Use the <form> tag with method="post". Add two inputs with name="name" and name="email". Add a submit button.

2

Add a PHP variable to check form submission

Add a PHP variable called form_submitted that is true if $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] equals 'POST', otherwise false.

PHP

  Name:
  
  
  Email:
  
  
  Submit

Need a hint?

Use $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] to check if the form was submitted with POST.

3

Retrieve form data when submitted

If form_submitted is true, create two variables name and email that get their values from $_POST['name'] and $_POST['email'] respectively.

PHP

  Name:
  
  
  Email:
  
  
  Submit

Need a hint?

Use if ($form_submitted) and then assign $name = $_POST['name']; and $email = $_POST['email'];.

4

Display thank you message after submission

If form_submitted is true, print a thank you message using echo that says: Thank you, [name]! We will contact you at [email]. replacing [name] and [email] with the variables $name and $email.

PHP

  Name:
  
  
  Email:
  
  
  Submit

Need a hint?

Use echo to print the message with variables $name and $email inside double quotes.