Store customer information in MySQL-database

Hi,

Just a few questions to get a better idea of what you want.

1) Do you want it so the user MUST fill in the form in order to continue to the download? or do you want it so they have the choice to skip the form?

2) What is your HTML and PHP knowledge like? Do you want a full working solution where you just edit the questions? or do you want a basic example to see how it works, so that you can create your own or modify it?

3) Do the users have accounts on your website? if so, must they be logged in to download files?

4) Do you want to take any identifiable information (E.g. email address) in which case each time a file is downloaded and questions are answered the answers can be linked to the email address so you can see who left which answers.

5) Do you want the questions to be teh same for every file?

mms_master

I have made a basic example and attached the files to this post. You will need to edit settings.php so the pages can connect to your database.

Could you still answer the questions in my last post please.
Have a look at the example (the appearance is only basic and can be changed), let me know if theres anything you would like changed in the example.

At the moment the example asks questions which are set in the HTML. (I.e. it does not retrieve a set of questions from the database it only stores the answers in the database.) The answers are stored as numbers. (I.e. if the user selects the first option a 1 is inserted in the database, if the user selects option 2 a 2 is inserted in the database and so on.) I did this to keep the size of the database to a minimum. However if you want to change the questions on a regular basis, I would have to use a different method.

NOTE: Rename the end of the attached files from .txt to .php

mms_master
download.txt
download2.txt
settings.txt
index.txt

Hello mms_master,

1. The user must fill in the questions
2. My knowledge is basically zero. But I do have a lot of programming experience. So it code is documented I will be able to change it to my needs.
3. No users don't have an account
4. Linking the data to an E-mail address is however a very good idea.
5. There is only one file-download where this needs to be done.  The questions are always the same (for now at least).

Can you also tell mu which fieldtype and length must be used in the table for each field?

Sorry forgot to tell you in my last post.
If you looking at the example I submitted above set table as follows (NOTE: the table will change for the next version because you want the email address added).

Database name: Set in settings.php
Table name: Set in settings.php

Fields:
ID (INT, auto_increment, Primary Key)
Question1 (INT, length: 2)
Question2 (INT, length: 2)
Question3 (INT, length: 2)

How urgent do you need the working solution? as Im at work at the moment, and I leave in 10 minutes...
Would it be ok to continue with this tomorrow? or do you need it asap?

mms_master

I also noticed I made a mistake in download.php.
Line 27:
<input type='radio' name='Question1' value='1' /> Yes<br /><input type='radio' name='Answer1' value='2' /> No

should be:

<input type='radio' name='Question1' value='1' /> Yes<br /><input type='radio' name='Question1' value='2' /> No

mms_master

Continue tomorrow is fine with my thanks for now.

I've uploaded the adjusted files to the server.
Storing the answers is working good.
Only downloading the actual file isn't working yet. If created a folder inside the folder where the PHP-files reside. In that folder "Downloads" I've copied the download file. Somehow the filename isn't added to the URL-address.

What is the file name of the file you want to download?

Have you modified the links index.php to match your file name?
The links need to look like:
<a href='download.php?f=YOUR_FILE_NAME'>Link Text</a>

Could you run it again, and when it gets to the page saying your download will start shortly, right click the page and click view source. Then copy that source code here for me please.

Thanks
mms_master

This is the source.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Downloads</title>
</head>
 
<body>
<a href='download.php?f=Downloads/Balanced-Plus%20Setup.exe'>Download Balanced-Plus Setup.exe</a><br />
<a href='download.php?f=Downloads/Balanced-Plus%20Setup.exe'>Download Balanced-Plus Setup.exe</a><br />
</body>
</html>
 
**** AND ****
 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content='5' URL='downloads/' />
<title>Downloading...</title>
</head>
 
<body>
Your download will start shortly...<br />
If your download does not start after 10 seconds click <a href='downloads/'>here</a>
</body>
</html>

Select allOpen in new window

The page that starts the downloads allready looks for the file specified in a downloads folder. So by linking to "Downloads/Balanced-Plus%20Setup.exe" you are actualy linking to "downloads/Downloads/Balanced-Plus Setup.exe".

I can see that the $FileName isn't being passed to downlad2.php

Try changing the link to this first:
<a href='download.php?f=Balanced-Plus%20Setup.exe'>Download Balanced-Plus Setup.exe</a>

See if anything changes. If it doesn't could you do right click > view source for both the page that asks the questions, and the page that starts the download.

Thanks
mms_master

No change.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content='5' URL='downloads/' />
<title>Downloading...</title>
</head>
 
<body>
Your download will start shortly...<br />
If your download does not start after 10 seconds click <a href='downloads/'>here</a>
</body>
</html>

Select allOpen in new window

hmm strange, it was working fine on my server...
Could you right click > view source on the page that displays the questions please.
Or if the files are on a live server perhaps you could give me a link so I can have a look myself?

p.s. Im working on the changes you wanted at the moment (i.e. adding email and making sure user fills in form etc)

thanks
mms_master

You can have a look at:
http://www.balanced-plus.nl/test/index.php

Bare with me, im working on it as fast as I can. Realy busy day at work today, everytime I sit down to work on this the phone rings or someone calls me on the radio.

Instead of trying to fix this at them moment as your not going to be using that version, I will just continue with what Im working on and see if the same problem occurs with that.

mms_master

It's fine with me. I realy appreciate your help and I'm not in a hurry.

Regards, Stef

Just thought id point out that the field EmailID in the tables I said to create is email id. (The lower case l and upper case i look the same...)

mms_master

Thank you very much, tommorow I will test everything and let you know.

Goodmorning,
Everything works except that there are always two records added in the questions-table. Hereby it doesn't matter if the Email already existed or not.

ok, will look into that.

mms_master

Do you mean it always adds 2 sets of questions even if it is the first time an email address has been used? or do you mean if you use the same email address more than once it duplicates the questions but not the email address?

mms_master

Do you mean it always adds 2 sets of questions even if it is the first time an email address has been used?  YES

I had another look through my code. There doesn't seem to be anything that could cause this. I cant see anything that would cause the query to be executed twice... and the query only inserts one record at a time. Im a bit puzzled... Just thinking of silly things now. You didnt press back or refresh? (even by mistake)

It works fine on my server aswell, which also suggests the code is ok. I will use the link you gave me now, and try it with this email address: mms_master@experts-exchange.com (which is obviously fake, but its only for testing). Could you please take a screen shot of both tables after my record appears and submit them here. (You can hide your email addresses if you want)

thanks
mms_master

Yes I did press that bar and clicked on Download file too.

Ok, that means that the code is working. When you press "Download File" internet explorer refreshes the page (automatically resubmitting the questions. Hence why you are getting duplicate question entries).

I can change the script in one of 2 ways to solve this problem.

1) If an email address has been used before, dont inserts any answers for that address (even if the answers are different to last time)

2) If an email address has been used before, insert answers ONLY if the answers are different to the last asnwers inserted for that email address.

This will sove the problem because when the user clicks "Download File" and the page gets refreshed, it will check if the email address has been used (which it will have), and then follow one of the steps above to stop the same answers being inserted again. Does that make sense?

Which method do you want?

mms_master

Wouldn't it be more correct when adding the data into the database would be done at a different place in the process in such a way that data will never be added more than once?
If the above isn't possible then I would opt for option 2.

>>Wouldn't it be more correct when adding the data into the database would be done at a different place in the process in such a way that data will never be added more than once?

This is possible. The code for inserting a record would have to be placed in a file that does not start any downloads. It cant be placed in download.php because the form hasnt been submitted then and it wont have anything to insert. If I was to create another file for inserting the record you would see something like this:

Click download link > Answer questions > See blank page > Get download blocked bar (click Download File) > Download begins

(Notice the blank page)

and your files will be:

index.php
download.php
download2.php
download3.php  <<<< Adding an extra file (which will display a blank page and then redirect)

So yes it is possible, but it means displaying the blank page and slightly increasing execution time (due to having to load another page).

Let me know what you want to do.

mms_master

In that case I prefer to have it like option 2 please.

Thank you very much, this is exactly what I needed.