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Undefined Index when using post

I'm a beginner php developer and I'm just playing around with some stuff. I'm trying to create a simple registration form:

registration.php

<?php

include('Auth.php');

$first_name = $_POST['first_name'];
$last_name = $_POST['last_name'];
$email= $_POST['email'];
$password = $_POST['password'];

$auth = new Auth();
$auth->register($first_name, $last_name, $email, $password);

?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>Registration</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form action="registration.php" method="POST">

        <p> First Name: <input type="text" size="20" name="first_name" id="first_name" value="" /> </p>
        <p> Last Name: <input type="text" size="40" name="last_name" id="last_name" value="" /></p>
        <p> Email: <input type="text" size="60" name="email" id="email" value="" /></p> 
        <p> Password: <input type="password" size="16" name="password" id="password" value="" /></p>

        <input type="submit" value="submit" id="submit"/>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

I get these errors:

Notice: Undefined index: first_name in C:\xampp\htdocs\Store\Store\Controller\Registration.php on line 6

Notice: Undefined index: last_name in C:\xampp\htdocs\Store\Store\Controller\Registration.php on line 7

Notice: Undefined index: email in C:\xampp\htdocs\Store\Controller\Registration.php on line 8

Notice: Undefined index: password in C:\xampp\htdocs\Store\Store\Controller\Registration.php on line 9

I'm guessing it's because the POST variable has nothing inside it yet because nothing has been submitted. I've seen around on the internet where the php processing form and the html form is in the same file as opposed to two separate files like what I'm trying to do. Where the html form refers back to itself. How can I go around this? Is this even good practice when it comes to separation of content and data processing?

I

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  • Please see stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Bphp%5D+undefined+index+%24_POST. There are many many many related questions, and the solution is always the same - isset($_POST['key']) Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 13:03
  • Please see update to my answer. Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 13:18
  • Welcome to SO - since this was your first question, it helps a lot to use a very descriptive question title, rather than something ambiguous like PHP/HTML problems. If your title includes part of the error message you are researching, SO will do a search of related questions and present them right there before you submit it. Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 13:19

2 Answers 2

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Note that these are just notices, which you should have then enabled in development environment but disabled when your site goes live. If you don't have access to the php.in file you can do that by using this line of code:

ini_set( "display_errors", 0);

To your problem now, it is indeed the fact that your variables are empty. You can set a name element into your submit button let's say <input type="submit" value="submit" name="submit" id="submit"/>

and then:

if (isset($_POST['submit']))
{

include('Auth.php');

$first_name = $_POST['first_name'];
$last_name = $_POST['last_name'];
$email= $_POST['email'];
$password = $_POST['password'];

$auth = new Auth();
$auth->register($first_name, $last_name, $email, $password);

}

That way, you will make sure that this fraction of code will execute only when your specific form is submitted.

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I'm guessing it's because the POST variable has nothing inside it yet because nothing has been submitted.

Right! There are no POST variables at the time you are loading your form for the first time.
So, you have to either move registration code to separate file or check if it was POST request to start processing it:

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST')
    include('Auth.php');

    $first_name = $_POST['first_name'];
    $last_name = $_POST['last_name'];
    $email= $_POST['email'];
    $password = $_POST['password'];

    $auth = new Auth();
    $auth->register($first_name, $last_name, $email, $password);
}

Is this even good practice when it comes to separation of content and data processing?

Well, it is not a better one. To separate your display logic from data processing you may wish to move the form into separate file and include it. However, for the little script consists of 20 lines it is not necessary.

For the more info on the separation you can refer to the answer I wrote recently: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9433418/285587 Feel free to ask if something being unclear. Though I hope it's simple yet fully working example of such a separation and form handling is quite easy to learn

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