Problem with losing pull down menu value AND with unexpected data persistance across two different pages...

This is really weird. I am having a problem with a static pull down menu (4 horse show dates) . The user picks one of the dates, fills out a form that includes the Form Builder pull down State menu and then POSTs all of that form to a eCart shopping cart page.

If you back up to the Entry Form page from the shopping cart, the State selection is retained, but the Show Date is lost. Very odd, because I built the Date menu by using the State menu code. In addition, a "CLEAR" button I added to that page does nothing.

My next step is to build a stripped down page to isolate the problem. I was surprised to find that the very first time I opened that stripped down page (new name, new browser window) - that page was populated from the data I had entered in the misbehaving Entry Form page.

How do I get a page to reset when I want it to and keep it from reading form data that belongs to another page?

I'll need to troubleshoot directly, see the private message section.

Right now this is only on a "localhost" server that is not accessible to the world. I am making some progess on the weird persistance of the data. The EntryForm submits to the "ChooseTest" shopping cart which redirects back to the EntryForm in case of validation errors. A session is being used to save the data, and simply cloning EnryForm and giving it a new name does nothing to break it off from the session that was saved.

I'm digging at this and working out how the redirects interact with the data.

The odd fact that the State menu persists when there is a redirection to the Entry Form and that the ShowDate menu does not persist is probably another issue.

(I am a former Bostonian... GO SOX!)

"The odd fact that the State menu persists when there is a redirection to the Entry Form and that the ShowDate menu does not persist is probably another issue."

This indicates that the validation for the ShowDate is failing.

when validation fails, it will only retain items that pass validation.

There are 2 different sessions at work:

there is the session that is created for validation failure, there is another session set for form persistence.

the form persistence session is only set when validation passes.

if validation fails, the validation session is set.

Well, that is useful information.

In any case, I'm using a pull down menu to limit the number of choices people get: they just get dates when we actually have shows, so it should be true that unless someone hacks the page code by hand (I double dog dare them...) - or some weird system failure... there never should be any invalid values there....

The nature of doing show entries kind of means that a lot of this doesn't need strong validation. This has been done with snail-mailed, hand written forms forever. Usually you have only 30-60 entries to deal with, and we know most of these folks. Illegible fields are routine, and the person handling the entries (the Secretary) will call or email the person concerned and just ask what they intended. Errors in calculating the $$ due also currently get handled that way.

Can I remove validation from the ShowDate and would that cure the problem with the menu?

"Can I remove validation from the ShowDate and would that cure the problem with the menu?"

if you don't want to have it validated, you certainly can remove the validation for it.

as for whether it will correct the problem i don't know for certain. I can only make guesses since I cant access the page to troubleshoot it.