[Zope] Variable setting in 'if' for use outside of 'if'

[Timothy Grant]

At 03:45 PM 2/10/99 -0600, you wrote:
>I would prefer not to have to replicate the full document within each
>portion of the if-elif-elif-else block, but I can't find a way to set a
>variable in the if-elif-elif-else block that can carry over to the rest
>of the document, since Zope considers it an error for a tag to be only
>partially contained within a larger block.
>
>Please help.

I'm going to piggy back on this question, as I was just about to ask
something very similar--I think.

Being new to Zope, and coming from the programming school that smaller and
faster is better, I attempted to create a page that had a couple of
interactive forms, and then a display form built into it. Various sections
of the page would become visible depending on which "submit" buttons were
pressed when. I actually had all the display stuff working quite nicely, it
was just the calculation stuff that was causing me problems.

It appeared that when a page was itself the subject of ACTION in a form, a
number of variables that were initially set when the first submit button
was pressed vanished (became unset) when the second submit button was
pressed. This caused me no end of grief. I tried storing some of the
required form variables under new names using REQUEST.set(), but this
seemed to have no effect. Eventually, I abandoned my approach of trying to
cram everything into one page, so I took the first form and made it a page
to itelf, the second form got its own page, and the display form also got
its own page.

I actually liked this as the HTML and the DTML were far easier to follow
and it appeared to work nice and fast. Well, I got all the display stuff
working correctly across the three documents and then attempted to put in
the calculations that were required. I was terribly disappointed to
discover that variables that were assigned in Form One, and were displayed
in Form Two no longer existed when I got to the form that displayed the
results. Here is some highly edited DTML, with my comments added in C++ syntax

index_html:
<FORM ACTION="detail_html" METHOD="POST">
  <table border=1>
    <th align="center"><B>Desired Margin</B></th>
    <tr>
      <td>
        <input type="radio" name="margin" value="1.12">12%<BR>
        <input type="radio" name="margin" value="1.17" checked>17%<BR>
        <input type="radio" name="margin" value="1.27">27%<BR>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
<input type="submit" name="MarginBtn" value="Select Margin" align="CENTER">
</FORM>

detail_html:
<p><b>Margin:</b> <!--#var margin--></p>	//This works exactly as it should.
It displays the

//margin that was selected in index_html

<FORM ACTION="form_html" METHOD="POST">
  <table border=1>
    <!--#in PriceCategories-->
      <tr>
        <td>
          <B><!--#var Category--></B>
        </td>
        <td>
          <select name="<!--#var Category-->" size=1>     //This is all
much nicer thanks to an earlier 
            <!--#in "PriceTable(PriceGroup=Category)"-->    //response from
Amos Thanks!
              <option><!--#var Description-->                       //The
fact that it works at all is a testament to
            <!--#/in-->
  //Zope's utility, thanks DC.
          </select>
        </td>
      </tr>
    <!--#/in-->  
  </table>
  <input type="submit" name="Calculate" value="Calculate" align="CENTER">
</FORM>

form_html:
<p><b>Margin:</b> <!--#var margin--></p>    //This breaks. Why is "margin"
undefined when I get here?

//Tracebacks show a NameError

The rest of the doc deleted as it breaks on the first line.

Any help or enlightenment would be tremendously appreciated.
-- 
Stand Fast,
	tjg.
===================================
Timothy J. Grant				tjg@avalongroup.net
Avalon Technology Group			www.avalongroup.net
(503) 246-3630 voice                              	
(503) 246-3124 fax			    	

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