Question:
I have a form that has three popup menus on it (among other things), and a hidden text box. A value is placed in the hidden text field based on the combination of choices made in the popup menus. On Submit the value of the hidden text should be POSTed to the database, however, the database returns an error. I’ve determined that it’s the presence of these extra popup menus that are not posted to the database that is fouling things up. The database I’m using is FileMaker 4, which acts as its own Web server. Is this common to all form processing, or is this particular to FileMaker 4? Is there a way around this? FileMaker 4 is not ODBC aware.

Answer:
This is a difficult question to answer without having more details. What is the specific error returned by FileMaker? Are the popup menus part of the same FORM block as the hidden field? If you e-mail me ([email protected] attn: James Miller) the source of your form page and your submission URL, I may have a better answer, but in the meantime, try this:

Create two different form blocks in your submission page. One contains only the popup menus, the other contains the hidden field, and the submit button (anything else you are submitting). When the popup values update, have your DHTML code update the hidden field in the form to be submitted. That way the values of the problem popup menus will not even be directly included in the POST.