Hey Sergio,
Sorry for the wait. Yes, I'd recommend the API - here's a quick explanation why.
I wrote FT to be as generic as possible, which is cool for developers once they see how things work, but it makes writing the documentation tricky as hell. In a lot of cases, like with multi-page forms, there are lots of different ways to do it. So when I started documenting how to do it without the API I realized it would confuse people. So I vouched for just documenting the way to do it with the API version. I figured that advanced users can always figure out their own techniques that best suit their problem set.
Now I've said my peace (piece?), here's a few examples of how you could do it without the API:
Basically there's a LOT of different ways to do it, but the API is definitely the simplest.
Hope this info (kinda?) helps...
- Ben
Sorry for the wait. Yes, I'd recommend the API - here's a quick explanation why.
I wrote FT to be as generic as possible, which is cool for developers once they see how things work, but it makes writing the documentation tricky as hell. In a lot of cases, like with multi-page forms, there are lots of different ways to do it. So when I started documenting how to do it without the API I realized it would confuse people. So I vouched for just documenting the way to do it with the API version. I figured that advanced users can always figure out their own techniques that best suit their problem set.
Now I've said my peace (piece?), here's a few examples of how you could do it without the API:
- On page 2, 3, 4... of your form, pass along the values already submitted in pages PRIOR to that page via hidden fields. So, every time the user clicks "Continue >>" the form is actually posting all information inputted up to that point. On the final page, just post it all to process.php.
- Use sessions to store the form information from each page, then on the last page, extract it all from sessions and create hidden fields to pass along everything.
- Again, store the data as you progress through the form, then use CURL to post the data on the final step.
- For Ajax / DHTML forms you could hide/show the pages in your multi-page form with javascript, then when the user clicks "submit" post it all directly to process.php either with a standard form request or via HTTPRequest.
Basically there's a LOT of different ways to do it, but the API is definitely the simplest.
Hope this info (kinda?) helps...
- Ben