Undefined Variables Notice

[ptonga]

I am pretty new to PHP and have been trying to follow a tutorial which uses PHP to pull data out of a simple MySQL db.

When I execute this script I get
"Notice: Undefined variable: PHP_SELF in c:\program files\apache group\apache\htdocs\dbcon4.php on line 19
Bob Smith"

I know I can simply change the following in my phph.ini file

error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE

Which means that my table data isdisplayed as selfreferncing links.

Dunno if it is wise to turn off the error reporting so I was wondering if can somehow define variables manually ?

Appreciate any help from the old heads out their.

Regards

Paul

[theslinky]

hmm... i'd not recommend you turn off error reporting. This will just leads to problems later on when you are trying to debug your code.

you are getting the error because I suspect you don't have register_globals set to On. If register_globals are off, leave them as off! Use $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] rather than $PHP_SELF because it is just a better (and more secure) way to access variables.

also, access form GET or POST variables using $GET['variable] or $POST['variable'] because using $variable will require register_globals to be On (which is considered insecure).

-sridhar

[scoppc]

Well, don't turn error_reporting off. You can set them so that only important error messages are displayed (like parse error, for example).

As far as I concern, the following will generate the "undefined variable" error message when it is loaded for the first time:

<form method="post" action="">
<input type="text" name="username" value="<?php echo $username; ?>">
</form>

The following will not produce the error message:

<?php
if ($username==""){
$username="enter username";

}
?>
<form method="post" action="">
<input type="text" name="username" value="<?php echo $username; ?>">
</form>