HTML Forms

Syntax:

<form method=[get|post] action="url">
    body of form
</form>

Method

• method of transmitting the data to the server/cgi program
• GET: attaches the data at the end of the url; data is accessed by the cgi program through an environment variable called QUERY_STRING. More on this when we discuss CGI and PERL programming
• POST: Under this method, the data is available to the cgi program via STDIN. The length of the input string is contained in the environment variable CONTENT_LENGTH. More on this when we discuss CGI and PERL programming.

Action

• Typically the url of the cgi program that will process the form data.
• Could be a mailto:e-mailaddress to receive form data via e-mail.

Body of the Form

• May contain regular html.
• May contain the followng form related components:
  - <input>
  - <select>
  - <textarea>

References

• NCSA's Forms tutorial
• An Instantaneous Introduction to HTML Forms by Michael Grobe, Academic Computing Services, The University of Kansas.
• A Form Tutorial , by Carlos Pero
• Oregon State University's Forms Tutorial