HTML layout question?

Question

I was just wondering I'm trying to display all a members friend requests in their own form for example, three friend requests will be displayed in three different forms or 20 friend requests will be displayed in 20 different forms and so on. The reason for this is because I want each friend request to have its own Add Friend or Deny Friend button.

So my question is: Is this a good way to display friend requests or is there a better way using HTML or PHP & MySQL?

Here is a code sample.

<ul>
    <li>
        <form method="post" action="index.php" enctype="multipart/form-data">
            <fieldset>
                <h3>Someone wants to be your friend!</h3>
                <a href=""><img src="./images/avatar.png" /></a>
                <input type="submit" name="add_friend" value="Add Friend" />
                <input type="submit" name="deny_friend" value="Deny Friend" />
            </fieldset>
        </form>
    </li>

    <li>
        <form method="post" action="index.php" enctype="multipart/form-data">
            <fieldset>
                <h3>Someone wants to be your friend!</h3>
                <a href=""><img src="./images/avatar.png" /></a>
                <input type="submit" name="add_friend" value="Add Friend" />
                <input type="submit" name="deny_friend" value="Deny Friend" />
            </fieldset>
        </form>
    </li>

    <li>
        <form method="post" action="index.php" enctype="multipart/form-data">
            <fieldset>
                <h3>Someone wants to be your friend!</h3>
                <a href=""><img src="./images/avatar.png" /></a>
                <input type="submit" name="add_friend" value="Add Friend" />
                <input type="submit" name="deny_friend" value="Deny Friend" />
            </fieldset>
        </form>
    </li>
</ul> 

Answer 1

If you want to play it safe (i.e. have something that works without JavaScript) using multiple forms is usually the way to go. If you can rely on JavaScript, you can use with "naked" form elements and submit them through AJAX.

However, in this case, there's no need for POST and forms. You're much better off using simple GET requests:

 <h3>Someone wants to be your friend!</h3>
 <a href="/friends/?command=add&id=1234567">Add friend</a>
 <a href="/friends/?command=deny&id=1234567">Denyfriend</a>

Answer 2

It's ok that way. It's clean. All you need to have is some sort of an ID of the friend request, to know what operation to do server-side, regardless of server-side language.

Answer 3

You can put the ID value as a hidden field in the form, that way your server-side logic will be able to get that parameter and add/deny the appropriate friend.

However, I agree with Unicron -- GET requests would probably be easier (just include the parameters in the URL) unless you need to hide the ID field for security reasons.