I've defined a new ZClass complete with customized form and add methods. The form displays some fields for the user to enter values into and the add method creates the ZClass and updates properties and adds content to the ZClass based on information entered by the user from the form. Depending on what is entered by the user, my add method may create new objects to store in the ZClass. My problem is that I can't seem to find a way to determine whether a user entered information. For example, my form defines fields where the user can specify the name of an image file along with some information about an image. If the user does not specify an image file, I don't want to add a new ZClass instance which would hold information about the image. In my add method, I've tried doing something like this: <dtml-if "REQUEST['photoFile']"> <... add the image ...> </dtml-if> That didn't work. Regardless of whether I entered information in photoFile the code inside the dtml-if got executed. I then tried: <dtml-if "REQUEST['photoFile'] and REQUEST['photoFile'] != ''' "> <... add the image ...> </dtml-if> This also failed. I added a <dtml-raise> tag to dump the contents of 'REQUEST['photoFile'] and it came out as ''. I don't understand why the code inside the dtml-if is executing. I'm sure that I'm doing something incredibly stupid, but I can't figure out what. Can anybody offer me any guidance? Thanks. James W. Howe mailto:jwh@allencreek.com Allen Creek Software, Inc. pgpkey: http://ic.net/~jwh/pgpkey.html Ann Arbor, MI 48103