remember form entries using php

Question

I have a form; url = question.html :

<form class="text1" action="question1.php" method="post">
 1) Question1?<br />
    <textarea cols="80" rows="5" class="text" name="Answer1"></textarea>
<br /><br />
 2) Question2?<br />
 <textarea cols="80" rows="5" class="text" name="Answer2"></textarea>
</form>

It is then submitted to question1.php which submits the posts to a txt file. And opens a new html page done.html in the done.html page I want to be able to go back to the question.html and I want it to remember the answers inside the textarea . I have currently got it working by writing the page again with the php page question1.php :

$answer1 =  $_POST["Answer1"];
$answer2 =  $_POST["Answer2"];

$fo = fopen("question.html", "w");

$write_this = '<form class="text1" action="question1.php" method="post">
 1) Question1?<br />
    <textarea cols="80" rows="5" class="text" name="Answer1">' . $answer1 . '</textarea>
<br /><br />
 2) Question2?<br />
 <textarea cols="80" rows="5" class="text" name="Answer2">' . $answer2 . '</textarea>
</form>'

fwrite($fo, $write_this); 

fclose($fo);

But this means I have to write the code from question.html twice once for question.html and again for question1.php . Is there a less laborious way of doing this?

Answer 1

I suggest that you build everything in one PHP file.

Post the page's data to itself and pre-populate the form with any existing $_POST values.

Something like this:

<?php

// get posted data, or set to false if none exists
$answer1 = isset($_POST['Answer1'])?$_POST["Answer1"]:false;
$answer2 = isset($_POST['Answer2'])?$_POST["Answer2"]:false;

// if the form has been submitted, write to file and show "Done" message
if (!empty($_POST)) {

  // write to file    
  $fo = fopen("question.html", "w")...... etc.

  // display "Done" message
  ?><h1>Done!</h1>
  <p>Submit again below.</p><?php

}


// display form, with any posted values included
// blank "action" attribute makes form submit to current page (same page)
?><form class="text1" action="" method="post">
 1) Question1?<br />
    <textarea cols="80" rows="5" class="text" name="Answer1"><?=$answer1?></textarea>
    <br /><br />
 2) Question2?<br />
    <textarea cols="80" rows="5" class="text" name="Answer2"><?=$answer2?></textarea>
</form>

Note that my syntax requires that PHP's short tags be enabled.
If short tags are not enabled, replace <?= with <?php echo .