php form modify blog post

[LucaCrippa]

Hi there,

I have a problem with post/get method in php forms. Here it is a form that allows the user to insert a new "blog post", including a title, a date and the text of the post.

 

 

<form action="sendmail.php" method="post">

<table align="left" width="80%">

<tr>

<td align=right><font face="Verdana,Arial" size="1"><B>Titolo</td>

<td><font face="Verdana,Arial" size="1"><input name="title" size=28 value=""></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td align=right><font face="Verdana,Arial" size="1"><B>Data</td>

<td><font face="Verdana,Arial" size="1"><input name="date" size=28 value=""></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td colspan=2><font face="Verdana,Arial" size="1"><B>Testo<BR><textarea name="text" cols=51 rows=10 wrap=soft></textarea></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td></td>

<td><font face="Verdana,Arial" size="1"><input type="submit" value="Pubblica"></td>

</tr>

</table>

</form>

Now, I echo these info in a txt file:

$file = fopen("../public/events/$filename","w");

echo fwrite($file,"<h6> $title </h6> </br> <h5> $date </h5> <p> $text <p> </br>");

fclose($file);

in order to put it on my webpage.

Now, I would like to modify a post! Also delete it, if necessary! But how can I read the txt file, extract the strings $title, $date, $text, put them into the form above and save it?

Thank you!

 

[justsomeguy]

That's not very easy to do with the way you store your data. You would need to open the file and use a regular expression to try and parse the different sections based on the HTML that you write to the file. This is one reason why people use a database or other storage format like XML or JSON instead of just writing text to a file.

[thescientist]

Another bit of advice would be to not save the markup with the text. If the format of your site ever changes (HTML/CSS/JS) and those elements need to be changed, you'll have to change everything in the file/database/etc.

 

As mentioned, storing just the data/text, either in a DB or in some sort of meaningful storage format (XML/JSON) will provide greater flexibility down the road, without coupling your business layer with presentation layer.