Apostolos Dountsis

The stability of Microsoft Windows has improved hugely since the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2. However, the chance that the operating system may crash still exists. When that happens, earlier versions of Windows displayed a blue screen with an error code and some gibberish unpreventable to human beings outside the Microsoft Windows Team. This screen has been ginen the nickname Blue Screen Of Death or BSOD. BSOD has its own entry on Wikipedia.

Windows XP has “resolved” the issue by automatically restarting the computer when a BSOD occurs. So, instead of addressing the problem that causes the BSOD or displaying a user-friendly message, your computer now automatically restarts with no indication as to why this has happen.

A remedy exists in Windows XP. Open the Control Panel, select System. Under the Advanced tab, click on the Startup and Recovery Settings, untick the Automatically Restart option and press the OK button.

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If you don’t have (or don’t want to use) a Hotmail or Live account and you want to use MSN Messenger follow the instructions below:

1. Navigate to the Windows Live ID page.
2. Under the Sign up today header and subsection“Use an e-mail address you already have” section, click the Get started now link (it should be the second one).
3. Enter your personal details.
4. Click next, type in you email again and click accept.
5. You should now have an email on the inbox of your email account to validation the account.
6. Use the email address and specified password from step 3 to authenticate into MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger (as it is called these days).

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The power of PHP rests on its simplicity and speed. One of the common uses of dynamic pages is the processing of HTML forms. PHP does not offer any functions for the development of web forms so managing one in PHP tends to be nothing more than a sequence of print statements. The PEAR library contains the HTML_QUICKFORM package that provides all the necessary classes and methods to display and manage HTML forms.

QuickForm Package

The HTML_QUICKFORM package (I will be referring to it as QuickForm) provides a set of classes creating, validating, processing HTML forms. Instead of printing form elements one-by-one, we can use its methods to define a form structure that handles the form. QuickForm automatically preserves default values for our elements across form submission, displays error messages, allows custom server-side validation and filtering that can be applied to individual fields and/or the complete form and generates JavaScript code for client-side validation. Furthermore, it simplifies file uploads.

The only reason why someone may feel reluctant in using QuickForm is due to the lack of proper documentation. However, this should not hold you back as this series of articles intends to cover the majority of the package. Among others, we will be concentrating on:

• Displaying a form
• Processing the from input
• Field validation
• File Uploading
• Using SMARTY for rendering the form

The goal of the articles is to demonstrate how we can make use of QuickForm and SMARTY to develop a web application.

Requisites

QuickForm not part of the standard PEAR installation. Therefore, we need to download it and place it in the HTML directory of PEAR. Please note that the HTML_COMMON package needs to be present as well.

If the following line does not return an error then you have QuickForm present on your system.
require('HTML/QuickForm.php');

In the case that you are working on a shared host environment and you do not have access to the PEAR directory and therefore you cannot install HTML_QUICKFORM then you can always download PEAR, HTML_COMMON and HTML_QUICKFORM to your webspace. Instructions on the manual installation of PEAR can be found on the PEAR web site.