Re: Getting rid of bugs I never thought I would have

On 06/24/2010 09:16 PM, Bill Mudry wrote:
> Overall, I am happy with the progress on my pet TAXA project but the 
> journey is proving to be like riding over a rocky road. The most 
> recent effort at a functional addition has been a form to let users 
> decide whether 2 of three types of data will show (general, 
> woodworking & numeric). The general
> data for each wood should always so and the users should be able to 
> choose if either or both of hte other two should show (using include 
> files).
>
> At first in the form's simplest unformatted form, I got it working 
> fine (and I rejoiced ....). Then when I tried to put it into a table 
> to pretty it up again --- I would no longer work (... almost). I tried 
> all kinds of things. If you temporarily hardcode the choices, the two 
> tables show or do not as desired. Somehow
> the user choices are not latching to the control lines. Every time you 
> click on the submit button
> (named ''Choose Data to View"), it cycles back to the same page like 
> it should.
>
> Now the weird things start. Yesterday, in reviewing everything before 
> submitting to this forum, I
> decided I should try it again ---- and to my astonishment for a while 
> --- it worked! I could choose
> the working data checkbox, the woodworking checkbox or both and they 
> would show. Don't
> check either and they didn't show just like should be. That was short 
> lived, though(!). It hasn't
> worked since. Ahem..... talk about flaky.....
>
> But then I noticed another problem. To activate the user choice you 
> have to click on the submit button of course. When I cycled through is 
> when I noticed that now on species detail sheets that
> are set up to show a scan of the wood being reported on the scan that 
> first showed disappears,
> leaving only the 'missing' graphic' symbol only.
>
> So now I have two consternating problems:
>
>         1 - How do I get the form to let users choose what data tables 
> to show to work consistently
>              well all the time? If it works mysteriously some of the 
> time, my code should be fairly
>              close to what it needs to be <fingers-crossed>.
>
>         2 - How do I keep the scan showing always? I realize that each 
> time the submit button is
>              hit, the location for what scan file (all .jpg) should 
> show gets lost. All scans are kept in
>              and alphabetical list of folders according to the first 
> letter of the (botanical) name of the           wood being showed:
>                 /taxa/wood_scans/gallery_a/<filename>
>                 /taxa/wood_scans/gallery_b/<filename> 
> /taxa/wood_scans/gallery_c/<filename> 
> /taxa/wood_scans/gallery_d/<filename>   and so on, but have been 
> loaded into
>                 the 'species' MySQL file (species.sql) also in column 
> 'picture_filename'.
>
<snip>

1) Fix 2 and I think 1 will be more easily traced.
2) I did not see that you were keeping the species_name once the user 
clicks on "Choose data to view." You could add a hidden input field that 
saves the value and returns it to the script. Something like:
echo "<input type='hidden' name='species_name' value='{$species_name}' />";
Once the user clicks the button to select the data they want to view, 
PHP has no idea what species they were viewing.

Thanks,
James


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