This is *exactly* the element I'm looking for. Any status on
where it stands?
Christian Neuss writes:
> This is actually a bit of a problem.. we started using forms as an oracle
> front end and of course have run into the same problems.
>
> What we do in order to pass information is the following:
> 1. every forms document is represented by a virtual HTML document which
> contains $variables. These will be replaced with information from
> the database.
> 2. virtual documents are called up by the query mechanism.
> Example:
> <FORM ACTION=
> "http://maotai/htbin/query/next=$trans_id/WWW/HTML/v-dieReise.html">
> Since the documents are accessed via queries, one can pass additional
> information in the URL. In our case this is a transaction id (which
> represents the database connection) and the document which is to be
> retrieved as result of the form action.
> A simple program can then strip "id" and access the database to make
> a query (any kind of state information can be identified via "id" and
> represented in the database). Database values can then be entered into
> the forms or other HTML documents by use of $variables.
> Example:
> <INPUT NAME="name" VALUE="$name"> Username ...
> This is the name: <B> $name </B>
>
This is another neat trick to getting state information into the process
and looks really valuable for some other apps. It does now put
the emphasis on a back-end app to untangle the query.
For the bulk of many form based apps (coming from a number of similiar
questions by people trying to generate form based apps here) the STATE
element is a simple and effective method. Really all that I'm looking
for is a form widget that isn't visible on the page. That is,you could
also handle this as adding an attribute to a form field, for example:
<INPUT TYPE="text" STATUS="hidden" VALUE="info I want to pass">
or
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" VALUE="info I want to pass">
Of course, "INPUT" loses it's proper meaning, so a STATE element sounds right...
Rich