Web Form Creation For Use On Engineering

Web Form Creation For Use On Engineering's Web Server

What can a form be used for?
	A web form is most commonly used to collect data over the internet. This could include surveys, request for information about a particular department, alumni relations, etc. That data can be stored in a database, sent via email to people interested in the data, or both.

Benefits of Web Forms Hosted on Engineering's Web Server
	There are three main reasons to have your web form hosted on Engineering's Web Server
	If your form complies with the restrictions and guidelines specified herein, your form can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Data posted from your web form can be emailed to you. This is a pro-active method of informing you when somebody has filled out your web form. Data posted from your web form can be stored in Engineering's Data Warehouse. From here, you can retrieve your data dynamically through any ODBC compliant software (ie. Access, Excel, FoxPro, etc.) and analyze, plot, chart, graph, compose pivot tables, create reports, etc. on your data.

Why are there restrictions on web form creation?
	Today, it is very easy to build a web form using a graphical interface such as Microsoft FrontPage and Netscape. These packages each create a web form a little bit differently. Information Systems has created a utility program that reads a web form and generates the necessary database table and web script to gather the form data. This utility, for future compatiblity issues, needs to use certain conventions in order for it to work properly. Listed below are some restrictions and guidelines in designing a web form for use on Engineering's Web Server. To view a quick tutorial on the different web form tags, please click here.

Getting the Form Up And Running
	Once you have looked over the following restrictions and guidelines, and you are confident your form meets the specifications, you are now ready to have it posted on the web. All you need to do is email the Webmaster with the URL of your form and a description of how you want the data returned to you (via email, in a database table, or both). You will be notified by one of the Webmasters when your form has been tested and is ready for use. If you want your data stored on Engineering's Data Warehouse, you will be given the necessary tools to access the data from any ODBC compliant program. If you do not know if you have those tools installed on your machine, please contact either Walt Beatty or Shan Karimushan .

Form Restrictions
	When viewing the HTML code, the form tag must be on one line, for example: <input type="text" name="text1" size="10" maxlength="10"> will not work because the tag wraps onto the next line. Below is the correct syntax. <input type="text" name="text1" size="10" maxlength="10"> All tags, except select and select multiple list, must have the type, name, AND maxlength or size property. This tells the utility program how big to make the database field and what name to give it. The select and select multiple tags do not need the size or maxlength properties set, however, they do require type and name. In fact, it is important that you DO NOT use the size or maxlength property with select lists. A tag's name property cannot have a name longer than 30 characters and cannot include spaces or hyphens. The underscore character is recommended if you need to separate the words in the name. For example, the following is not a valid name: ThisTagIsLongerThan30Characters-IDoNotCare. ONLY include characters from A-Z (upper and lower case), numeric (0-9), and an underscore ( _ ). For example, all of the following are valid names: This_Is_Valid15, ThisIsAnotherValidName, This_Name_Is_30_CharactersLong. DO NOT USE AN APOSTROPHE IN ANY OF THE TAG PROPERTIES. The total size of your form tags cannot be longer than 1962. To calculate the total size of your form, take the maxlength of each field, if the field only has a size property, use that instead, and add up those numbers. For each select tag, take the length of the largest option value for that tag. Then, for each textarea field you have, add 16. For example: You have a form with: 10 text tags, each with a maxlength of 20 4 select tags, each with total length of 10 20 checkbox, each with size of 20 10 radio buttons, each with size of 15 4 textarea tags. The total size of your form will be: (10 x 20) + (4 x 10) + (20 x 20) + (10 x 15) + (4 x 16) = 854.

Form Guidelines
	Use descriptive names for your form tags, but keep them 30 characters or less. Keep field sizes and maxlength to a minimum. For example, a 2 character state abbreviation (PA, MD, NY, etc) would not need a field of size 20, it would be best to use a field of size 2; a telephone field would not need a field size greater than 23 characters. Radio button fields can have the same name value IF they represent a group of similar values. For example, if you have a survey where the user can only pick one of five ratings for a particular question, you may choose to use five radio buttons for this. Ex. Please rate the effectiveness of the lecture: 1 2 3 4 5
	Each of the five radio buttons have the same name (R1) since only one value will be selected.

To view an example form that meets the criteria specified on this page, please click here. Make sure to view the source code!