edit/update - all in one PHP pages?

[Jim]

Hi,

Let me explain how I'd generally do things. For a page where the user
edits data, I'd generally call it something like editfred.php (for
example), the page which updates the data would be called
updatefred.php and equally the page which processes a delete would be
deletefred.php. I like splitting the pages up this way, it feels less
cluttered and more organised than throwing all the functionality in one
fred.php.

Here's the problem though. If the user enters erroneous data into the
form editfred.php which is subsequently processed by updatefred.php
then that error needs to be reported to the user. Traditionally what
I've done is have updatefred.php list any errors it finds and then
provide a link to go back or ask the user to hit the back button on
their browser. This is no longer viable, instead I'd like to
automatically throw them back to editfred.php with all their data
already filled in and the fields causing errors to be highlighted. My
question is: what's the best way to do this?

There springs to mind several ways:

1) combine editfred.php and updatefred.php. Again, I'm not keen on this
but it does seem the most logical and programatically easiest.

2) use sessions to store the data, editfred.php would then check
for data in the session each time it's loaded. Is there a maximum data
size for use with session objects?

3) write code to wrap and store the data in a cookie which could then
be read by editfred.php, similar to sessions I believe. However max
cookie size is 4Kb which wouldn't be enough on some forms.

4) store the data from editfred.php in a table in the database which
again editfred.php would check for when loaded. overhead of db access
each time however.

Any other ideas? What method do you guys currently use?

Thanks,

Jim.

[Jim]

Thanks to all for the replies.

I've decided to keep the pages separate and use sessions to pass data
between them when an error occurs. The reason for this is that in
reality, these errors will hardly ever be generated. It's only when the
user has javascript turned off that this functionality will be needed
as javascript validation will capture errors from all but one field out
of about 15 forms.

This keeps my pages simple (just like me) and means that the
interpreter won't be wasting processor power.

Thanks,

Jim.