What Forms Do

You have probably already come across a web form. Forms are needed to let viewers enter input that is eventually process by "backend" programs. It's these backend programs that actually do something with the entered data -- like enter it in a database.

Most forms have three major sections that are coded with different languages:

The input screen. This is what we'll be studying in this section. This is the web page that has all of the text boxes, buttons, and menus that make up the visual form and allow the user to input data. It is coded with HTML

Form validation. This is almost always a JavaScript program that's downloaded with the form to check the data before it's submitted to the server. This program checks to make sure required form items, called "fields", are filled out and things like that. This is covered in Advanced JavaScript.

Form Processing. This is the program that accepts and process the user input. CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts written in Perl are the standard here. This is a program on the server that runs in order to process the entered data.

Again, this section will only present the HTML techniques for making the visual part of a form, not the validation or processing.

<form> & <input>

Forms are centered around two tags. The <form> tag is used to contain the entire form. The <input> tag makes the individual fields like a text box.

Form fields made by the <input> tag can be text boxes, buttons, checkboxes, etc. We'll be going over each of these in the following tutorials. There are also some important form fields that are made with other tags.

Using NAME

It is important to get in the habit of giving all of your <form>s and <input>s a NAME attribute:

<form name="pretty_box">

This name will be used extensively in later validation and processing routines. Get in the habit of naming your forms and fields right off the bat.

Summary

A form is a special web page object that can accept user input. This input is validated and processed by other programs. We will only be studying how to make the visible, input part of forms.

Forms can contain one or more "fields". A field is an area where data is entered by the viewer. It can be a text box, button, checkbox, radio button, etc.

Form processing makes extensive use of the <form> and <input> NAMEs. Get used to naming every <form> and <input> tag you make.

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