<div>
I would do it like this 
 

<pre><code class="code-10 nolinks" id="code-20-42744419-1">&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
&lt;html&gt;
&lt;head&gt;
 &lt;meta charset=&quot;utf-8&quot;&gt;
 &lt;meta name=&quot;viewport&quot; content=&quot;width=device-width&quot;&gt;
 &lt;title&gt;test&lt;/title&gt;
&lt;/head&gt;
&lt;body&gt;
 &lt;div id=&quot;editItem&quot;&gt;
 &lt;!-- edit form code here --&gt; 
 &lt;/form&gt; 
 &lt;button id=&quot;new&quot;&gt;New&lt;/button&gt;
&lt;div id=&quot;modal&quot;&gt;
 &lt;!-- new form here --&gt; 
&lt;/div&gt; 
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
</code></pre>
 
The edit form is created dynamically and populated by your database. &nbsp;The new form is hidden in a modal. When you click the New button, the modal appears and you can create your new item.
</div>

Consultant

Sheldon Livingston

<div>
Thank you guys... I'll be looking at OOP. &nbsp;Zakaria... can you provide some links please?
</div>

<div>
There are other options 
 
If you want to go the render route then typically you set up helper functions to render out fields. For example 
 

<pre><code class="code-1 nolinks" id="code-20-42744575-1">$form-&gt;addInput('name', $data);
</code></pre>
This would then do something like 

<pre><code class="code-1 nolinks" id="code-20-42744575-2">function addInput($name, $data=[])
{
 $value = isset($data[$name]) ? $data[$name] : ''
 echo &lt;&lt;&lt; INPUT
 &lt;input type=&quot;text&quot; name=&quot;data[{$name}]&quot; value=&quot;{$value}&quot;&gt;
INPUT;
}
</code></pre>
Before calling this you would 
With the above you can pass anything you like to the field generator. If you are editing a record pass in the data value - the generator add it to the rendered field. If you are adding a new record then pass an empty array - the generator will handle this for you. 
 
You can add as many field generators as you need and expand the options to handle things like required / disabled etc. 
 
Another thing to take note of with the above with is the name of the field. Note how we are using array notation for the variables. 
 
This is useful in processing the form data when it comes in. You need to do one call 

<pre><code class="code-1 nolinks" id="code-20-42744575-3">$data = isset($_POST['data']) ? $_POST['data'] : false;
$errors = validateData($data));
if (empty($errors)){
 // form is good
}
else {
 // set errors and render form for re-submission
}
</code></pre>
 
This allows you to keep database data separate from meta data you might want to submit with the form. 
 
Personally I find the gymnastics required for manipulating form rendering on the server with all the combinations of new / edit / valid / not valid overly complex. I much prefer to render the form out as a vanilla form and then in the client make an API call to fetch the data (using AJAX) which is then injected into the form. 
 
The big advantage with doing it this way is that the form gets rendered once by a single function - the logic around errors , validation, populating, emptying saving etc are all handled in the client with AJAX calls to an API to validate / save / retrieve data. 
 
By using intelligent naming conventions you can write very generic code that will do all the operations with surprisingly few lines of code. It also means that your API functions are dead simple as they don't have to deal with the API.
</div>

<div>
You're welcome @Sheldon 
 
Take a look at this answer it has a simple example using the PDO to connect your DB with OOP (<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43630810/understanding-oop-how-to-use-pdo-connection-in-other-classes/43631201?sgp=2#43631201" rel="ugc">How to use PDO connection with OOP</a>) you will find a link at the end of the post for further information. 
 
You may found this series of videos about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxAQ_d3yFqO01D0HmH8hbGicyC2qC0QeW" rel="ugc">OOP Crud using PDO </a> helpful.
</div>

<div>
<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
Using PHP I will have a form with about 50 fields on it. 
 
One way to get to the page/form is to search by item ID. &nbsp;If found the page will come up and the form will fill with existing data. 
 
I would like to utilize the same page/form to &quot;create&quot; items. 
 
What would be a good way to do this? 
 
One way is to set each DB field to a variable and then populate the form using the variables. &nbsp;For &quot;new&quot; items I would simply set the variables to defaults (usually blank or empty). 
 
Is this about the only way?
</div>
</div>

Using PHP I will have a form with about 50 fields on it.

One way to get to the page/form is to search by item ID.  If found the page will come up and the form will fill with existing data.

I would like to utilize the same page/form to "create" items.

What would be a good way to do this?

One way is to set each DB field to a variable and then populate the form using the variables.  For "new" items I would simply set the variables to defaults (usually blank or empty).

Is this about the only way?

PHP &quot;Form&quot; best practice?

PHP is a widely-used server-side scripting language especially suited for web development, powering tens of millions of sites from Facebook to personal WordPress blogs. PHP is often paired with the MySQL relational database, but includes support for most other mainstream databases. By utilizing different Server APIs, PHP can work on many different web servers as a server-side scripting language.

PHP &quot;Form&quot; best practice?

PHP "Form" best practice?