I have a project nearing completion that allows members of an organizatin to login and review their membership records, make changes and submit them to a mysql database for update. I have several fields that might be modified by the user and a few that are read only and wont be modified. I am using SESSION and POST to pass variable from page to page and all of that is working well. I am coding the mysql update function now and I want to detect the submitted form fields for a change from the initial value (i.e the user modified their info in a field) and then based on knowing which fields had a change I will run the correct update query for those specific updates and avoid running an update query on fields that had no change. Again I know the value of all of the variables coming from the form fields so I am not needing help on that just need to know Is there a change or not. I know there are a couple of javascript event handlers that can be used but I want to avoid javascript in this particular project (I already have some JS but want to avoid it here). I am looking at compairng the intial values for each field as they are specific to the user that is logged in and were extracted from the database and placed in varaibles that were displayed in forms. After review, the user will either make changes and submit, log out or even submit with no changes. I need to know if change(s) or no change was made to each form field. Again I want to do this in php if possible. Im looking for a tight method that I can apply to get the information as described. I'm in a bit of a hurry as always so anyone with ideas or solutions please throw them this way.
If one of the fields is a password don't output the password in plain text as anyone who viewed the page source would obviously be able to see it. Either store a hash in the hidden field or just assume that if they have typed a new password into your 2 password fields and both password fields are equal they must want to change their password from whatever they currently use.