Ever since I first started scripting cgi to process forms I’ve used the two file format: the first file puts up the form and such and calls the second file to process the results of the form.

But it really doesn’t have to be like that. At work, I have a single program that lets you search through our database and display things, setting options and so on, and paging through the results. It only uses one executable (well there are a few more, but each one encapsulates a certain kind of function and as long as you’re doing that, you stay within that executable). Now admittedly I’ve torn my hair out more than once debugging this thing, so this idea can go too far in the other direction, but keep it to simple pairs of form/post and I’m liking it.

So I’ve started looking at my old sites and in particular the old one of mine that was offline for six years and rethinking how I did this stuff. And I’m thinking the single file form/post is a much better way to go. It’s fewer files for one thing. I’m not left having to grep through the file to see what it calls to trace down problems. They’re all there in one spot.

So for example I just redid the mail form which started out in mail.php that called sendemail.php (that’s another thing, it simplifies naming conventions — at another site of mine I’ve been trying to standardize to action_form.cgi and action_post.cgi but still it’s all a mess.

But this comes out nice and slick in one file. Start up the headers, check whether it’s a submit and the form goes in the first half the if statement, the post in the second half. Close off with the footers and it’s all set.

Now, let’s see, just how many more files are lurking around on this site? Sigh…