Building Single Row Database Forms with HTML
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Welcome to the second chapter of a thirteen part series about creating database forms with HTML. In this article, we will continue our discussion on single-row forms and explain how to send changes to the server database. We will also go over the recordset and the common functions used to manipulate the corresponding form.
The Controls
As I said in part I, the web page form is produced at the server and sent to the client when he clicks a web link at his computer.
Here we have to distinguish between the form as seen by the user and the HTML FORM element. The form as seen by the user has all the controls, while the HTML FORM element does not have all the controls (see explanation below).
This is the form as seen by the user:
Fig.1. Single-Row Form
The controls are in an HTML TABLE element. The TABLE element is given a border with a width of 2px. It is good to put the controls in a block-level element. This is for convenience. You can then give the assembly of controls a common style (background) and address (manipulate) all of them as a group. The fields of the form (as seen by the user) are HTML INPUT elements and the buttons are HTML BUTTON elements. The HTML INPUT elements are used to hold a row (record) of the recordset.
The first row of the recordset is row number 1. The second row is row number 2. The third row is row number 3 and so on. The row number of the recordset row, which is shown on the form, is called the Row Position in this series. It has other names in other circles. The row position and the total number of rows are each held by an HTML INPUT element at the top-right area of the form. However, these INPUT elements are made read-only and are given zero-width borders, so they do not appear as input elements. I made them like that just for the purpose of “taste.”
Next: Sending Changes to Server Database >>
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