How do I pass data between pages in PHP?

PHP is stateless unless you save things in session (which isn't secure right?)

You would need to make page2.php read all the values from page1.php and store them either in a server side state (session) or a client state (cookies or maybe hidden fields in the form)

If you want any of this secure or a secret, then you have to consider all of that as well. Nothing I explained is secret or secure in any way.

EDIT: here is an example of page1.php that sends the values of page1.php to page2.php as get parameters. You can do this with hidden fields, cookies or sessions as well.

What is important to remember is that page2.php is totally unaware of page1.php, and can't get to the values like you could it forms programming. Each page starts and ends it's life by the time you see a full web page, so you have to use some extra tricks to keep values. Those tricks are sessions, cookies, form posts, or gets.

<html>
<head>
<title>Page 1</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
//set defaults assuming the worst
$total = 0;
$one =0;
$two=0;

//verify we have that value in $__POST
if (isset($_POST['submit']))
{
    $submit = $_POST['submit'];
    //If it is true, try some math
    if($submit == "sub-total")
        {
            if (isset($_POST['one']))
            {   
                $one = $_POST['one'];
                //Add checks to see if your values are numbers
                if ( ! is_numeric($one)) { $one = 0;}
            }

            if (isset($_POST['two']))
            {
                $two = $_POST['two'];
                if ( ! is_numeric($two)) { $two = 0;}
            }
            $total = $one + $two;
            echo " Your Price is \$ " .number_format ($total, 2, '.', ','). "<BR>";
        }
    if($submit == "submit" )
    {
        //go to page two, with the total from page1.php passed as a $__GET value
        header("Location: page2.php?total=".$total);
    }
}
?>
    <form method="post" action="page1.php?submit=true">
        <input type="text" name="one" id="one" value="<?=$one?>"/>
        <input type="text" name="two" id="two"  value="<?=$two?>"/>
        <input type="submit" name="submit" value="sub-total" />
        <input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit" />
    </form>
</body>
</html>

You can try using $_REQUEST instead of $_GET or $_POST - it works for both. Also, if you put <input type='hidden' in the form on page 2 with your variables posted from page 1 they should get passed right along.

your php pages don't have state, so you have to get the posted variables, and send them along via hidden input fields.

<input type="hidden".....

You could also use sessions ,but it is a bit hackish to use them with forms if you ask me.

It depends on the method attribute of your HTML form how the variables get passed to your PHP script.

In this case, it sounds like page1.php does not have any side effect, and just passes on values, so the form on page1.php should use method=get, and the code of page2.php that reads these fields can find them in $_GET.

The Submit button on page2.php (presumably) does have side effects on the server side, so it should use method=post, which you can read back from $_POST on the server side.

Also, have a look at the HTML source of page2.php after filling out the first page, to see if the values are passed correctly.

How do I pass data between pages in PHP?

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