Problem with HTML Anchor Character (#)

skyeflye

Hi all,

I am experiencing a problem with the "pound sign (#) when passed to a file as part of a query string. I have a "exit" page on my site that I can pass a variable called "$link" to. $link is a string and can be any URL that you want to forward the user to. The problem is, if I pass it a $link value that has an HTML anchor at the end, it drops the anchor off altogether.

For example, if I reference the page with:

exit.html?link=http://www.something.com/pagename.html#bottom

the script seems to think that the value of the $link variable is only:

http://www.something.com/pagename.html

instead of:

http://www.something.com/pagename.html#bottom

Is it somehow treating the # sign as a line-comment or something? How can I create a string with the whole URL, including the anchor?

Thanks!

Anon

problem is you need to url encode before you put that in your link.

this example will be for the first page with the link:

<?
$link="link=http://www.something.com/pagename.html#bottom";

$encoded_link=urlencode($link);

echo "<a href=\"exit.html?$encoded_link\">exit link</a>";
?>

the urlencode() function will make your string url compatible. it will actually turn it into this:
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.something.com%2Fpagename.html

hope this helps, let me know if you need more help.

Anon

correction:

$link="http://www.something.com/pagename.html#bottom";

skyeflye

That's what I was afraid of...

We have non-technical content authors who need to be able to create exit links to other web sites. They will not be able to handle any PHP themselves...

I guess I'll just have to create a second variable called "anchor" that also gets passed to the "exit.html" page...like this:

exit.html?link=http://something.com/pagename.html&anchor=name_of_anchor

Then I'll add code into the "exit.html" file that will build the destination URL, appending the anchor at the end the way it needs to be.

Thanks a lot!

-THEO-

Anon

well, you can always just replace the "#" with "%23" .. the authors could probably handle that .. but then again, your idea is good too.

good luck

skyeflye

Yeah, that's a good point! Thanks!

I'll propose both solutions to the folks upstairs and see which one they think is more unconfusing. 🙂

Take it easy!

-THEO-