HTTP links

dcjones

Hello to you all.

Is it possible to store data in my SQL database in URL format.

When the data is retrieved I want to be able to click on the data (in URL format) and get it to take me to the link concerned.

Anyone have any idea, please.

Dereck

zero-one

I don't see why not. You don't really need to store the URL in the database with HTML tags, do you? You can simply have the URL set to a variable when pulled from the database (say we call it $url) and have PHP:
<?
print("<a href=\"$url\">$url</a>");
?>
and you should be fine.

If you need to store it in a database as an HTML formatted link, you can append the <a> tag to the variable from the form you're sumitting via PHP (if this is what you're doing.)

-phil

bad_goose

Yeah, it's always a good idea to add the html formatting when you output the data rather than when you save it.

dcjones

Hi, thsnks for the help. one problem I have, where do I put the required code. Below is the code I am working with:
// Start a table, with column headers
echo "\n<table border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing\"1\">" .

  "\n\t<th width=\"15%\" bgcolor=\"#cccccc\"><font color=\"black\" size=\"-2\" >Location</th>" .
  "\n\t<th width=\"25%\" bgcolor=\"#cccccc\"><font color=\"black\" size=\"-2\" face=\"airal\">Guest House</th>" .
  "\n\t<th width=\"15%\" bgcolor=\"#cccccc\"><font color=\"black\" size=\"-2\" >Telephone No</th>" .
  "\n\t<th width=\"15%\" bgcolor=\"#cccccc\"><font color=\"black\" size=\"-2\" >Fax No</th>" .
  "\n\t<th width=\"15%\" bgcolor=\"#cccccc\"><font color=\"black\" size=\"-2\" >Website</th>" .
  "\n\t<th width=\"15%\" bgcolor=\"#cccccc\"><font color=\"black\" size=\"-2\" >Tariff</th>" .
  "\n</tr>";
               echo "\n<tr>\n\t<td></td>\n</tr>";
              echo "\n<tr>\n\t<td></td>\n</tr>";
           echo "\n<tr>\n\t<td></td>\n</tr>";



 // Until there are no rows in the result set,
 // fetch a row into the $row array and ...
 while ($row = @ mysql_fetch_row($result))
 {
    // ... start a TABLE row ...
    echo "\n<tr>";


    // ... and print out each of the attributes
    // in that row as a separate TD (Table Data).
   foreach($row as $data)
      echo "\n\t<td background=\"../../Gif/Background.gif\"> <font color=\"black\" face=\"arial\"size=\"-6\"  > $data </td>";



            //   echo "\n<tr>\n\t<td></td>\n</tr>";
          //    echo "\n<tr>\n\t<td></td>\n</tr>";
       //   echo "\n<tr>\n\t<td></td>\n</tr>";

    // Finish the row
   echo "\n</tr>";
 }

 // Then, finish the table
 echo "\n</table>\n";

}

$query = "select location, name, tel, fax, web, tariff from accom where acctype = 'G' order by location";

// Connect to the MySQL server

HELP Please

Dereck

bad_goose

//change this:
echo "\n\t<td background=\"../../Gif/Background.gif\"> <font color=\"black\" face=\"arial\"size=\"-6\" > $data </td>";

//to this:
echo "\n\t<td background=\"../../Gif/Background.gif\"> <font color=\"black\" face=\"arial\"size=\"-6\" > <a href=\"$url\">$url</a> </td>";

That will work, assuming $data is just a plain URL. If instead $data is a long string that could contain urls that must be made into links, you will have to do a regular expression search on it to replace any urls found with a hyperlink. The code would look something like this:

while($data = preg_match('http\\://\\S+', $data, $matches)) {
    $url = $matches[0];
    $data = str_replace($url, "<a href=\"$url\">$url</a>", $data);
}

By the way, you don't need to use echo if you're outputting a long chunk of non-dynamic html. Just put it as regular html outside of the <?php ... ?> tags. You can use those tags to jump into and out of php from plain html whenever you want.

dcjones

Hi, I must thank you for your interest.

I don't think I was very clear with my problem.

I have data in the database , its just plain text.

one of the fields is called "location" it appears as the first field in the data row. I want to be able to click on that "location" field and be taken to another HTML page in the same web.

Can you explain to little more but please talk slowly, I'm new to this PHP and scripting in general.,

Many thanks

to you all

bad_goose

Okay, add this right after the foreach ($row as $data) line.

if ($data = preg_match("^\\\\s*http\\\\://\\\\S+\\\\s*\$", $data, $matches)) {
    $url = $matches[0];
    $data = "<a href=\"$url\">$url</a>";
}

Tell us if that works.