Intelligent Forms and Form Processing

[dan <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, all -

I am working on a few small projects to try and teach myself how to 
build intelligent forms.  I have come as far as making a few simple ones 
that are created when their parent function is called.  Something like 
the following:

function displayMyForm($username='',$password='',$account='') {
	// do some stuff for the vars that were passed
	// create form
}

Nothing much, but it gives me a good footing on the use of displaying 
forms dynamically even when some data is missing - making use of default 
values.

The problem that I am faced with now, as simple as it seems, is a 
situation such as the following:

User goes to index.php, enters in some information.  ACTION='<? echo 
$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>' is the action.  Some data is carried in the 
form of variables that were entered in on a form.

I want that same page to "catch" that data and process it.  If the data 
is complete and valid, pass to another section of the form.  If it is 
not, prompt the user to re-enter some data.

I don't really know what I'm asking here.  I guess ultimately I'm 
curious as to how people make intelligent forms such as this.  How do 
you deal with missing/incomplete values?  What about multiple "steps" of 
a form?  How do you verify that, if a user is on "step 2", they came 
from "step 1"?  Do you mix $_GET and $_POST to verify the process?

Not coming from a big programming background, some people might think 
that these questions are pretty lame, and I'll go ahead and tell you 
that you are absolutely correct.  However, as I start, I would like to 
develope and work on good programming habits, so I don't learn bad 
habits to begin with.

Any feedback will be appreciated.

Thanks
-dant

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