Using JavaScript To Call PHP Database Routines Between Windows

In an effort to bring high ease of use, some of us provide a HTML styled select or drop-down list
of selections the user can make. It’s not too hard to have PHP build a variable that holds a select
option list such as:

<?php
$OptionList = ""; $First = 1;
while ($Row = mysql_fetch_array($Result, MYSQL_ASSOC)) 
{
    $ContactID = $Row["ContactID"];
    $Company = $Row["Company"];
    if ($First) 
    {
        $SelMsg = " selected"; $First = 0;
    } 
    else 
    {
        $SelMsg = "";
    }
    $Line = "<option value='".$ContactID."'".$SelMsg.">".$Company."</option>n";
    $OptionList .= $Line;
}
?>

We might (I do) have a button on a main screen that says [Select Contact] for the user to make
their selection in a second window. This first window has a JavaScript function that opens a PHP
page to bring back a number of values from the Contacts database like Company and Name, as read
via a key value the user can supply in a form.

The first screen then contains this JavaScript function to just go “read” a Contacts record.
The PHP screen GetVals.php is my own database read-and-post-back generic utility.

var newWin3 = null;
function doContactID() {
var ContactID = document.forms.BoothUpd.ContactID.value;
var URL = '../code/GetVals.php?Filename=Contacts&IDname=ContactID&IDval=
' + ContactID + '&Fields=Company,Type,RepID';
var params = 'top=20,left=80,width=300,height=200,minimized=yes,resizable=yes,
scrollbars=no,titlebar=no,menubar=no,status=no';
if (!newWin3 || newWin3.closed) {
newWin3 = window.open(URL,"",params);
}
if (newWin3.opener == null) {
newWin3.opener = self;
}
newWin3.focus();
}