Establishing a "post ID" value for a comment leaving system

Question

I am trying to attach a numerical "post ID" value to comments so that they can be retrieved from the database and displayed in the proper place. How do I establish this numerical value within my html form as something that gets sent to the script that inserts it into the database? I assume I need to use GET or POST but I don't understand how to use those to send anything except text entered by the user.

This is the form I am using to send the "name" and "comment" inputs:

 <div class="comments">
 <form action="foxpost.php" method="post">

 <label for="name">Name</label><br>
 <input id="name" name="name" type="text" /><br>
 <label for="message">Comment</label><br>
 <textarea class="message" id="message" name="message"></textarea><br><br>

 <input type="Submit" value="Post Comment" />
 </form>
 </div>

Answer 1

Put the id in a hidden field in your form:

<input type="hidden" name="post_id" value="id_goes_here" />

Answer 2

I would suggest to not have the ID as part of the form and just use your databases AUTO_INCREMENT feature.

Answer 3

Since you tagged this question with PHP, I'm guessing thats the language your using for your back-end. Another assumption I'm making is that your actually formatting your request querystring with the postID, something like "http://example.com/posts.php?postID=1212", notice the postID in the querystring, you just pass that on, like this:

 <div class="comments">
 <form action="foxpost.php?postID=<%= $_GET['postID'] %>" method="post">

 <label for="name">Name</label><br>
 <input id="name" name="name" type="text" /><br>
 <label for="message">Comment</label><br>
 <textarea class="message" id="message" name="message"></textarea><br><br>

 <input type="Submit" value="Post Comment" />
 </form>
 </div>

Using

<%= $_GET['postID'] %>

will simply echo the postID from the querystring straight into the HTML, or you could assign it to a variable.