Help with form action code

Can anyone describe what the following form action code means:

<form action="?formsubmit=1" method="post">

I'm not familiar with the "?formsubmit=1" portion of the code. This is
contained in a website I will be inheriting. As the form in context
does not appear to work (it simply redisplays the form page without
any indication of success or failure). As I have found other instances
of incorrect or deprecated tag structures elsewhere in the website,
I'm not sure how much credence to give this syntax. At best I assume
some script name is intended to appear immediately before the question
mark with the following as a parameter. Is this analysis correct, or
am I unaware of something?

And lo, Michael didst speak in alt.www.webmaster:

> Can anyone describe what the following form action code means:
>
> <form action="?formsubmit=1" method="post">

The action attribute of the form describes the URI to which the form
contents will be submitted. In this case, the URI is a relative one which
begins with the query string. Essentially it means: "submit the form to
the current URI, but tack on '?formsubmit=1' to the end of it"

Thus if the URI of the form is www.example.com/form.php, then the form
will be submitted, via the POST method, to
www.example.com/form.php?formsubmit=1

This is a sneaky way of submitting both POST and GET variables at the same
time. In PHP, this means that the REQUEST_METHOD will be set to POST, but
the GET variable "formsubmit" will be set to 1.

> I'm not familiar with the "?formsubmit=1" portion of the code. This is
> contained in a website I will be inheriting. As the form in context
> does not appear to work (it simply redisplays the form page without
> any indication of success or failure).\

There is nothing wrong with the form code. It is likely the server-side
code which accepts the form input is not recognizing that the form has
been submitted.

> As I have found other instances
> of incorrect or deprecated tag structures elsewhere in the website,
> I'm not sure how much credence to give this syntax. At best I assume
> some script name is intended to appear immediately before the question
> mark with the following as a parameter. Is this analysis correct, or
> am I unaware of something?

It is nothing so complex. It is simply the query string end of a relative
URI.

Grey

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