MACROMEDIA 38028779 - Macromedia Dreamweaver - Mac, Using Manual, Page: 499 / 582

Creating Forms 499
Processing forms
Forms are processed by the script or application specified in the
action
attribute
of the
form
tag. Select a form and look in the Property inspector to see what the
associated action is.
The simplest forms use JavaScript or VBScript to perform all form processing on
the client side (as opposed to sending the form data to the server for processing).
For example, you might have a small form at the bottom of a page that contains
only two radio buttons labeled Yes and No, plus a Submit button. The form
action might be a JavaScript function defined in the
head
section of the document
that displays one alert if the user selects Yes and another alert if the user selects No:
function processForm(){
if (document.forms[0].elements[0].checked){
alert('Yes');
}else{
alert('No');
}
}
To use a client-side JavaScript function as the form action:
1
Select a Submit button in a form.
2
Attach the Call JavaScript behavior to the button. (See “Call JavaScript” on
page 446.)
3
In the JavaScript text box that appears while attaching the behavior, enter
processForm()
.
4
Add a
processForm()
JavaScript function (like the one shown above) to the
head
section of your document.
You can handle many form-processing tasks using client-side scripting, but you
can’t save the data entered by the user or send it to someone else. For such
purposes you need a server-side application such as a Common Gateway Interface
(CGI) script. CGI scripts can be written in Perl, C, Java, or other programming
languages. There are several sites on the Web that offer free CGI scripts that you
can use (see “HTML and Web technologies resources” on page 25). You can
modify those scripts to fit your needs. You can also ask your Internet service
provider or Web team if there are any available CGI scripts that are already
configured to run on your server.
For an introduction to CGI scripting, see the CGI resources listed in “HTML and
Web technologies resources” on page 25.