Coding Forms

Each form must have a beginning and ending tag. Forms may not be nested; however, an HTML document may have multiple forms in it. The following is an example of a Beginning and ending Form:

</form>

Click on the links above for further information.

Application: Open your HTML editor. Create a new html document and Save as my_form.html.
Type or copy and paste the form tags above into the body.

METHOD determines how the data will be sent to the cgi or other program that will process the form. The possible methods are GET, or POST.

GET send the form data with the URL to the action.
POST uses a different method of sending the data.

The 'post' method is more efficient and has less problems than the 'get' method. 'Get' is almost never used.

ACTION posts(or gets) the URL to which you are passing the information. This usually is a cgi script. Endings such as *.pl, *.php, *.asp or *.exe are common

The file at the end of the URL is a script or program which processes the information according to its design.

If you do not have access to a script you can use action="mailto:youremailaddress". This sends the responses to you as a string of characters.

NAME identifies the particular form. It is not necessary to form functioning, but is considered best practice. It keeps open the possiblity of manipulating multiple forms through script and is especially useful if you have multiple forms on one page.