Accessing form input by ID

Question

I know in PHP you have $_GET, $_POST, and $_REQUEST to access form input through their names in the html tags. Is it possible to do the same for their ids? For example:

<form>
First name: <input type="text" id="firstname"><br>
Last name: <input type="text" id="lastname">
</form>

In PHP:

$f_name = $_GET['firstname'];

Using Javascript, you can: `getElementById()` - but as far as I know, you can't get this information server-side. — Drew, Apr 17 '13 at 21:28
Why not though? Aren't names and ids virtually the same thing? — Leon Helmsley, Apr 17 '13 at 21:29
Same thing? Of course not. Names don't even need to be unique. — Álvaro González, Apr 17 '13 at 21:31
@LeonHelmsley ID's are used for CSS purposes (and Javascript) - PHP just doesn't transfer this information when a post is made. — Drew, Apr 17 '13 at 21:31
I see; so ids are clientside and names are serverside. Thanks! — Leon Helmsley, Apr 17 '13 at 21:32
homework http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1397592/difference-between-id-and-name-attributes-in-html — Alex Abreu Mulet, Apr 17 '13 at 21:36

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 17 '13 at 21:46

2

When submitting a form, only the input fields with a name attribute are submitted. Just add a name attribute same as id, or do some JavaScript hack to populate name attributes on form submit.

edited Apr 17 '13 at 21:46

Web_Designer

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answered Apr 17 '13 at 21:30

artahian

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 17 '13 at 21:31

No you cannot do this when submitting the form normally. You could however, use client-side JavaScript to construct the submission to the PHP script.

But this assumes you can modify the client-side page. If you can do that, you can also just add the correct names to the form fields.

<form>
First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" id="firstname"><br>
Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" id="lastname">
</form>

Accessing form input by ID

2 Answers2