Passing info between pages

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From: rhb@hotsand.att.com
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 94 18:53:13 EST
Original-From: hotsand!rhb (Rich Brandwein)
Message-id: <9401092353.AA07290@hotsand.dacsand>
To: www-talk@library.ucsf.edu
Subject: Passing info between pages
Content-Length: 1095

I'm looking for guidance on a way of passing information
between pages (specifically forms).  

There are many application in which may want to pass "state"
information between pages. For instance (based on an app 
someone's written here) I may want to select a database
from an initial form and be able to bring up a generic
page that allows you to search on that particular database.
How do I pass information to this "generic" page?  

The only viable methods in a form (at least that I can 
see) is to pass the information as a value to a form field
or pass the information via the *name* of a form field
(i.e., you're limited to the values passed in the query).
The latter method allows you to pass the information tranparently
to the user.  This seems a bit awkward - is there another 
method?  

For the non-form case, my application can add variables
to the query subset of the path and I can pass this transparently
via the POST method.  In the form case, the query subset is
under control of the form (e.g., I can't stick query terms into
the form action) as far as I can tell.

Rich