How to save string entered in HTML form to text file

Question

I have a very basic PHP file. i want to have two textboxes for user input, and a submit button. The user will enter their first and last name, then i would like to append or create a TXT file with the data entered from field1 and field2.

Possibly i am going about this the wrong way. I will post two of the ways i have been tinkering around with.

<html>
 <head>
  <title>Field1 & 2</title>
 </head>
 <body>
  <form>
  What is your name?<br>
  <input type="text" name="field1"><br>
    <input type="text" name="field2"><br>
   <input type="submit" value="Submit">
  </form>

 <?php
$txt= $_POST['field1'].' - '.$_POST['field2']; 
$var_str3 = var_export($txt, true);        //is this necessary?
$var3 = "$var_str3";                       //is this necessary? 
file_put_contents('fields.txt', $var3.PHP_EOL, FILE_APPEND);
?>

 </body>
    </html>

I cant figure out how to get the data from field1 and field2 into a string variable.

I have also messed around with using this php instead of the section listed above

  <?php
 $txt= "data.txt";
 if (isset($_POST['field1']) && isset($_POST['field2'])) {
$fh = fopen($txt, 'a'); 
    $txt=$_POST['field1'].' - '.$_POST['field2']; 
   fwrite($fh,$txt); // Write information to the file
   fclose($fh); // Close the file
 }
?>

Your form doesn't have a `method` attribute, which means the default method, GET will be used. You have to add `method="POST"` to your form element if you want to access POST parameters in PHP. — Michał Perłakowski, Feb 16 '16 at 22:01

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 17 '23 at 09:47

You should learn about HTML Forms and PHP Form Handling.

In your code you have to use a form HTTP method. And the form data must sent for processing to a PHP file.

In this code i use HTTP POST method you can also use GET method the result will be same. This two method is used for collecting the form data. And the php file name is "action.php".

index.html

  <html>
     <head>
      <title>Field 1 & 2</title>
     </head>
     <body>
        <form action="action.php" method="post">
          What is your name?<br>
          <input type="text" name="field1"><br>
            <input type="text" name="field2"><br>
           <input type="submit" value="Submit">
        </form>
     </body>
    </html>

action.php

<?php
 $path = 'data.txt';
 if (isset($_POST['field1']) && isset($_POST['field2'])) {
    $fh = fopen($path,"a+");
    $string = $_POST['field1'].' - '.$_POST['field2'];
    fwrite($fh,$string); // Write information to the file
    fclose($fh); // Close the file
 }
?>

Paolo · Answer 2 · 2016-02-16T22:29:43.447

Let's take a snippet from http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp

<form action="action_page.php" method="post">
  First name:<br>
  <input type="text" name="firstname" value=""><br>
  Last name:<br>
  <input type="text" name="lastname" value=""><br><br>
  <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

Note the first line: upon form submission a php script is called: action_page.php.

action_page.php is your webpage with the form and the embedded php script. action_page.php both displays the empty form and then process the submitted data.

On the first line also it is specified that the submitted data is sent with the POST method.

The php part will look like this:

<?php
if( isset($_POST['firstname'] ) && isset( $_POST['lastname'] ) )
{
    $txt= $_POST['firstname'].' - '.$_POST['lastname'] . PHP_EOL; 
    file_put_contents('fields.txt', $txt, FILE_APPEND);
}
?>

The if statement is there because the first time the script action_page.php is loaded its purpose is only to display the form and don't receive any POST data.

As the form is submitted by the user the script will receive the data and store to file.

The script will also (with this approach) display again an empty form ready for the submission of another entry.

You can rearrange things in order to have two web pages: one with just the form, another one with a "Thank you" message and the data processing php script.

How to save string entered in HTML form to text file

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