HTTP_GET_VARS and databases!!

anthill

Hi, first of all, please accept my apology if i am going about this the wrong way and what i'm doing is really silly, im a newbie to PHP so sorry for any ignorance. Oh and sorry if you don't understand what i'm asking, its hard to put into words 🙂

ok, well, this is just an example. From a html file i have links:

<a href="track.php?cat=1">click</a>
<a href="track.php?cat=2">click</a>

and in track.php i want it to take the value cat, i.e. 1 or 2 or 3 depending on the link and display the right message from a database.

database is set out

text commment
1 yippee
2 whoopee

so if <a href="track.php?cat=2">click</a> is clicked, the message whoopee is displayed, etc. i have this script so far but it wont work and i dunno why 🙁

<?php

$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "username","password");

mysql_select_db("database",$db);

{
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE text = $HTTP_GET_VARS['cat'],$db);
}

echo $result;

Thanks for taking time to read this, if you understood i that is 🙂

Ant

atomm

I don't think PHP parses array index tags ([]) inline, even in double quotes. Maybe try:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE text = " . $HTTP_GET_VARS['cat'],$db);

Also, depending on your version and configuration of PHP, you might not even have $HTTP_GET_VARS, and you'd have to use $_GET in its place.

Third, mysql_query returns a MySQL result reference, not the actual result as text, if I remember correctly. If none of my other suggestions worked, try using
$resultarray = mysql_fetch_row($result);
after the mysql_query line. That will return an array indexed by column number, not name, starting at 0, so to get "comment", you could do $resultarray[1].

That's all I can think of for now...

philipolson

Your code is close, you should trust yourself more and do more tests ;-)

Try this:

if (!$conn = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass)) {
    print "Could not connect to database";
    exit;
}

mysql_select_db($dbname, $conn);

$sql = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE text = '{$HTTP_GET_VARS['cat']}'";

if (!$result = mysql_query($sql)) {
    print "Could not run query ($sql), error: " . mysql_error();
    exit;
}

$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

print $row['comment'];

anthill

Thanks atomm, your third suggestion was pretty much spot on! 🙂 Never got round to trying philipolson's but i've noted it down just in case it all goes pear shaped 🙂

Cheers you guys!!

Ant