PHP 4.2.3 query string vars not translated to PHP vars?

ablair

I had PHP and Apache running together perfectly. I just upgraded to Apache 2 and PHP 4.2.3. Mostly it works fine, however query string variables are not being translated into PHP variables. I can access the variables through $HTTP_GET_VARS but that would mean rewriting all of my code. I have tried the "Data Handling" configuration directives in PHP.ini without success.

Any Ideas?

jerdo

If you really want to have globals just change register_globals=off to on in your php.ini

ablair

Thanks Jerdo,

I already tried setting "register_globals=on", it had no effect. I know the variables are being parsed because they appear in $HTTP_GET_VARS.

Regards,
Alan

dancemovez

I'm having the same problem. Someone please help! 😕

ablair

Actually I tried jerdo's suggestion of setting "register_globals=on" in PHP.ini. I had already tried this before without success. However when I first tried, I never rebooted Apache after making the change. Most of the directives in PHP.ini don't seam to require rebooting Apache to take affect but this one does.

Also, although I have written code in the past that expects the GET and POST variables to automatically be passed as golbals, I can understand why they have changed this behaviour in the new PHP version. Therefore all the code I write from now on will either explicitly import the variables I want or use the $HTTP_GET_VARS or $HTTP_POST_VARS arrays to access them.

Regards,
Alan

dancemovez

Aah, now it works! I just restarted mine as well, thanks 🙂

What are the disadvantages to registering everything as globals?

ablair

Some of the disadvantages I can think of are :

Wasted memory. Only a problem if you have huge scripts and/or hundreds of hits.
Security. I don't know specifically what risks there are as I'm not that clever. However, by automatically registering globals someone cleverer than me could add there own PHP code to the URL query string which would be automatically parsed as a variable. This could be dangerous if you use "eval" statements in your code. e.g. eval("Some clever PHP code to delete all files on your server") would do exactly that.

Regards,
Alan