Form creation - retain values

Hello all,

I'm trying to implement a detailed search form (on top of the apachesolr project). I decided to build the form using the Forms API, as it seems the way to "do it" in Drupal.

I get the values from the form in the submit handler just fine, I can fire my search request and get the results.

But when I display the page (and the form with it) again, the search form is empty. This is not entirely what I want, as I would like the user to refine their search.

I tried multiple ways to keep the values in the form, and after quite some googling, form_state['storage'] seem the way to go - to fill it with the value there, and use those in form method to fill in the default values. The problem is, that storage always is empty when I get the second time in the form function, and I have no real clue what I'm missing here.

The relevant code here is:

function mymodule_searchform(&$form_state)
{
  dsm($form_state);
  $items = array();
  $items["name"] = array(
    "#type" => "textfield",
    "#title" => t("Name"),
    "#default_value" => isset($form_state["storage"]["name"]) ? $form_state["storage"]["name"] : "",
  );
  $items["submit"] = array(
    "#type" => "submit",
    "#value" => t("Search"),
  );

  return $items;
}


function mymodule_searchform_submit(&$form_state)
{
  $name = $form_state["name"]["#value"];
  $form_state["storage"]["name"] = $name;
  $form_state["rebuild"] = true;
  // Do search here
}
function mymodule_search()
{
  return drupal_get_form("mymodule_searchform");
}

I hope someone can help me here :)

Regards,
Jens