How do I keep or retain my form values even if the form has been submitted?

[ajnoguerra]

I have a form that submits its values to itself. I want the values to stay printed so the user will not try to right all over again what he/she has previously typed.

[__]

When you receive the form submission, save the valid values and print them when you print the form again.

# check if form was submitted
if( isset( $_POST ) ){
# validate submitted value
$text = some_func_to_validate( $text )?
$text:
null;
}
# if $text was submitted & valid,
# use it for form value
$text_value = $text?
$text: // submitted value
“”; // empty string
# print form
print <<
Enter your text here:

[ajnoguerra]

Thanks @traq for that. I just wonder, Should it output any error if there is no validation used? I got the idea from your code. I just used the isset to check if the form was submitted then declared my variables and used them as field value.

Will I encounter any problems with this?

if( isset( $_POST ) ){

$title = $_POST;
$editor_data = $_POST[ ‘editor1’ ];
$format = $_POST[ ‘format’ ];

}

my form:

Title
Select Title Format

Main
Heading 2
Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5
Heading 6

<?php echo $editor_data; ?>

[JohnMotylJr]

Have you thought about using localStorage to save form values?

[__]

> Should it output any error if there is no validation used? *[…]* Will I encounter any problems with this?

At a **minimum**, you need to be sure you don’t output any HTML or JavaScript with the values (use [`strip_tags()`](http://php.net/strip_tags) or [`htmlentities()`](http://php.net/htmlentities)) as a safeguard against XSS attacks.

> Have you thought about using localStorage to save form values?
— @JohnMotylJr

I agree that it’s good to use localstorage *also*, but doing it in PHP is still practical (since you have to do server-side validation anyway) and convenient for the user (since you return *only* the valid values).

[Author]

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