Am I doing hidden fields correctly? Because it will not show

[Tomie]

How do I create a hidden textfield in CGI PM, currently I am trying to use:

$q->hidden(-name=>'numQuestions',
                -default=>$j);

Although this does not show in the source code for the page.

Any advice please? Thank you.

[CyCo]

Surely you mean hidden field.

$q->hidden(-name=>'numQuestions',-value=>$j);

or

$q->hidden('numQuestions',$j);

[Tomie]

Still dosen't show, I cannot understand it.

This is the code...the hidden tag is shown in bold

#!perl

use Win32::ODBC;
use CGI;

my($db) = new Win32::ODBC("Exam");
my($db2) = new Win32::ODBC("Exam");
my($q) = new CGI;

$db->Sql("SELECT * FROM questions ORDER BY questions.question;");

print_header();


create_questions();


print_footer();

# subroutines
sub print_header {
	print	$q->header(),
			$q->start_html(-title=>'Exam test', -style=>{'src'=>'/style2.css'}),
			$q->h1('Products'),
			$q->br;
}

sub print_footer {	
	print	$q->br,
			$q->submit(-value=>'Submit'),
			$q->reset(-value=>'Reset'),			
			$q->end_html();
}

sub create_questions {
	$q->startform(-action=>'exam_test2.pl');
	$j = 1;
	while($db->FetchRow()) {
		%data = $db->DataHash();
		print	"Ques $data{'questionID'}: $data{'question'} ";		
		
		$db2->Sql("SELECT questions.questionID, answers.answer, answers.correct FROM questions INNER JOIN answers ON questions.questionID = answers.questionID WHERE (((questions.questionID)=$data{'questionID'}));");
		@answers = ();
		$i = 0; # hold the element position in the answers list
		while($db2->FetchRow()) {
			%data = $db2->DataHash();	   
			@answers[$i] = ($data{'answer'}); # push the answer into a list
			$i++; # increment i to move forward one element in the list
		}
		$radioName = "answer" . $j;
		print $q->radio_group(-name=>$radioName,
							  -values=>[@answers]);

		print $q->br;
		$j++;
	}
	$q->hidden(-name=>'numQuestions',-value=>$j);
	$q->endform(); # print a closing HTML </form> tag
	$db->Close(); # close the connection to the ODBC

Any ideas please? Thanks in advance!

[CyCo]

You need to print it.

print $q->hidden(-name=>'numQuestions',-value=>$j);
print $q->end_form;

Also, it should be...

$q->start_form