Dan wrote:
Richard Lynch wrote:
...
The "value added" of the central switch seems dubious to me.
Just my opinion.
Richard -
I want your opinion, which is why I'm taking a stab at the list ;)
What other methods would be good to use? Using a giant if statement?
Thanks -dant
Nononono.... a giant "if" statement is still a case of you trying to control all form processing in one centralized location. I won't venture a guess as to why Richard doesn't approve of the centralized approach, but rather just pointing out that if() is logically similar to switch().
Now going back to your original question... one easy to predict problem is that you've forgotten to handle form submission errors. I mean surely you will want to validate the incoming data and do something sensible if the data doesn't match some regular expression(s). If you're really trying to go for a centralized approach then I'd say this validation should be handled through this main script.
A simple alternative? Each form has its "target" attribute set to itself. You start out with invalid data. Then when the form POSTs to itself you can validate the incoming data within the same script where the form elements are located. This approach puts all of the business logic for one page *inside the one page*. It makes debugging a lot simpler because, well, if you have a problem with page1.php then you know it lies somewhere in the script page1.php instead of any of the following:
- page1.php - controller.php - index.php - page2.php - etc.
One of the easiest ways to reduce maintenance is to make it easy to find your bugs. I'm not being condescending to you, because we all have bugs. But it sure is easier to fix them when you can find them. :)
Jason -
Very valueable input, I appreciate that.
I did not forget about error checking. Error checking (or currently lack thereof) is the reason why I sent a message to this list.
However, since I'm anal, I want the entire page to be named index.php, which is why I am stuck on the idea of making each page's "target" set to index.php WITH $_SESSION['step'] being set to 1, 2, 3, whichever is the next step in the process. If this is bad, what are my alternatives now?
Thanks! -dant
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