Can you use php to have a user input text and then it show up on an HTML page (as in the php script edits the HTML to add text)?

Answer 1

Yes. This can be done by posting the data back to the server and outputting the results to the browser.

You would need to create your HTML form which submits the content you wish to manipulate

<form method="post" target="myproject.php">

<input type="text" name="usertext"/>

</form>

On the PHP side (in this case in "myproject.php"), you can read the post data and act accordingly.

<?php

if(array_key_exists('usertext', $_POST)){

$submittedValue = $_POST['usertext'];

}

The key item to note is that the posted data can be accessed as key values in the array $_POST. You can then do whatever you wish with the posted value.

If you want to maintain an ongoing list of items that the user is submitting, you could do it a couple of ways. To maintain it permanently, you'll probably want to open up a database (check out "mysqli" on the the documentation for PHP). If you only want it for that active user session, then you might want to consider another global array called $_SESSION. It is an array that gets stored on the server, retaining data for any user between page loads. The code above could be modified to use it like so:

<?php

session_start();

if(!array_key_exists('submittedValues', $_SESSION)){

$_SESSION['submittedValues'] = array();

}

if(array_key_exists('usertext', $_POST)){

$_SESSION['submittedValues'][] = $_POST['usertext'];

}

Now you can loop through the array $_SESSION['submittedValues'], dealing with every value the user has submitted in their current session.