How can I execute a PHP function in a form action?

Question

<?php
require_once ( 'username.php' );

if (isset($_POST['textfield'])) {
    echo username();
    return;
}

echo '
<form name="form1" method="post" action="">
  <p>
    <label>
      <input type="text" name="textfield" id="textfield">
    </label>
  </p>
  <p>
    <label>
      <input type="submit" name="button" id="button" value="Submit">
    </label>
  </p>
</form>';
?>

You need to run the function in the page the form is sent to.

In PHP functions will not be evaluated inside strings, because there are different rules for variables.

<?php
function name() {
  return 'Mark';
}

echo 'My name is: name()';   // Output: My name is name()
echo 'My name is: '. name(); // Output: My name is Mark

The action parameter to the tag in HTML should not reference the PHP function you want to run. Action should refer to a page on the web server that will process the form input and return new HTML to the user. This can be the same location as the PHP script that outputs the form, or some people prefer to make a separate PHP file to handle actions.

The basic process is the same either way:

1. Generate HTML form to the user.
2. User fills in the form, clicks submit.
3. The form data is sent to the locations defined by action on the server.
4. The script validates the data and does something with it.
5. Usually a new HTML page is returned.

A simple example would be:

<?php
// $_POST is a magic PHP variable that will always contain
// any form data that was posted to this page.
// We check here to see if the textfield called 'name' had
// some data entered into it, if so we process it, if not we
// output the form.
if (isset($_POST['name'])) {
  print_name($_POST['name']);
}
else {
  print_form();
}

// In this function we print the name the user provided.
function print_name($name) {
  // $name should be validated and checked here depending on use.
  // In this case we just HTML escape it so nothing nasty should
  // be able to get through:
  echo 'Your name is: '. htmlentities($name);
}

// This function is called when no name was sent to us over HTTP.
function print_form() {
  echo '
    <form name="form1" method="post" action="">
    <p><label><input type="text" name="name" id="textfield"></label></p>
    <p><label><input type="submit" name="button" id="button" value="Submit"></label></p>
    </form>
  ';
}
?>

For future information I recommend reading the PHP tutorials: http://php.net/tut.php

There is even a section about Dealing with forms.

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to achieve as we don't have what username() is supposed to return but you might want to try something like that. I would also recommend you don't echo whole page and rather use something like that, it's much easier to read and maintain:

<?php
require_once ( 'username.php' );
if (isset($_POST)) {
  $textfield = $_POST['textfield']; // this will get you what was in the
                                    // textfield if the form was submitted
}
?>

<form name="form1" method="post" action="<?php echo($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) ?">
  <p>Your username is: <?php echo(username()) ?></p>
  <p>
    <label>
      <input type="text" name="textfield" id="textfield">
    </label>
  </p>
  <p>
    <label>
      <input type="submit" name="button" id="button" value="Submit">
    </label>
  </p>
</form>

This will post the results in the same page. So first time you display the page, only the empty form is shown, if you press on submit, the textfield field will be in the $textfield variable and you can display it again as you want.

I don't know if the username() function was supposed to return you the URL of where you should send the results but that's what you'd want in the action attribute of your form. I've put the result down in a sample paragraph so you see how you can display the result. See the "Your username is..." part.

---

// Edit:

If you want to send the value without leaving the page, you want to use AJAX. Do a search on jQuery on StackOverflow or on Google.

You would probably want to have your function return the username instead of echo it though. But if you absolutely want to echo it from the function, just call it like that <?php username() ?> in your HTML form.

I think you will need to understand the flow of the client-server process of your pages before going further. Let's say that the sample code above is called form.php.

1. Your form.php is called.
2. The form.php generates the HTML and is sent to the client's browser.
3. The client only sees the resulting HTML form.
4. When the user presses the button, you have two choices: a) let the browser do its usual thing so send the values in the form fields to the page specified in action (in this case, the URL is defined by PHP_SELF which is the current page.php). Or b) use javascript to push this data to a page without refreshing the page, this is commonly called AJAX.
5. A page, in your case, it could be changed to username.php, will then verify against the database if the username exists and then you want to regenerate HTML that contains the values you need, back to step 1.

I think it should be like this..

<?php
require_once ( 'username.php' );

echo '
<form name="form1" method="post" action="<?php username() ?>">
 <p>
  <label>
   <input type="text" name="textfield" id="textfield">
  </label>
 </p>
 <p>
  <label>
   <input type="submit" name="button" id="button" value="Submit">
  </label>
 </p>
</form>';
?>

It's better something like this...post the data to the self page and maybe do a check on user input.

   <?php
    require_once ( 'username.php' );

    if(isset($_POST)) {
      echo "form post"; // ex $_POST['textfield']
    }


    echo '
    <form name="form1" method="post" action="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '">
      <p>
        <label>
          <input type="text" name="textfield" id="textfield">
        </label>
      </p>
      <p>
        <label>
          <input type="submit" name="button" id="button" value="Submit">
        </label>
      </p>
    </form>';
    ?>