redirect w/ MySQL

[theDog]

I'm trying to make a page that redirects to a URL specified by id#, IOW http://mysite.com/redirect.php?id=2 should redirect to a URL specified in the row that corresponds to the $id.

I've gotten so far as to have malformed URLs in the header, but i'm still having trouble attaching the variable to a row ID and the row ID to the URL.

Table looks sorta like this:
+----+----------------------------+
| ID | url |
+----+----------------------------+
| 2 | http://this_site.com |
| 3 | http://that_site.net |
+----+----------------------------+

Code looks like this:

$result = @mysql_query("SELECT * FROM db");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
IF ($row[ID] == $id)
{
 $url = $row["url"];
 header("Location:$url");
}
//This ELSE was so i could see what was output
//when ($row[ID] != $id), and it prints "2" which 
//so happens to be the first row in the table. 
//Er, unless $id == 2 in which case it redirects to
//the above-mentioned malformed URL.
else{
echo($row["ID"]);
}

If this all exposes me as a clueless n00b, well, yeah. It wouldn't surprise me if the whole concept is wrong, in which case i need my concepts adjusted. Please speak slowwwly 🙂

[cgraz]

you don't want to select everything () from the database--there is no point to return all those values when you already know that you want to select the url that pertains to a specific id. Instead, select everything that pertains to that specific id:

$result = @mysql_query("SELECT * FROM db WHERE ID='$id'");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
 $url = $row["url"];
 header("Location:$url");

Let me know how that goes.

[theDog]

That worked delightfully! Thanks.

I think i tried something like that. I'm guessing we don't use the equality operator == in queries, eh? :o And i would have been through 150 syntax errors before i put the single quote marks around '$id'. Still, i wasn't as far off as i thought, so feels good.

Do you know of a good n00b reference? This is all so frustrating... all the books and online tutorials seem to start out OK... they tell you <?php echo "Hello World"; ?>, but then two paragraphs later they're having you write complex scripts without understanding what you're doing. Especially they leave out a lot about syntax... where do you use single vs. double quotes, where you use parentheses vs. curly brackets, etc.

More immediate importance, i can't get through my head the stripslashes() and addslashes() functions. So the URLS are not actually inserted in the database like above; they are formatted www.this_site.com and i been using a variable to display the http:// part. This doesn't seem to work inside the header() function, or at least i can't get it to work.

Er... all optional queries of course. I've felt so alone and haven't asked for help and now i'm running on. Thanks again for getting me unstuck. On to the more bigger mess...
😃

[cgraz]

Hey, I'm with you. I'm still learning.

For the site, if you have www.mysite.com in the database, and you want to add [url]http://,[/url] you could do

$url = "http://";
$url .= $row["url"];
header("Location:$url");

the .= will add on to the variable. so now if you echo $url, it will output http://www.mysite.com (assuming $row["url"] is equal to www.mysite.com

one equal sign means is assigned to, two equal signs means is equal too.

// This means 1 is assigned to $one
$one = "1";

if ($one == '1') {
    echo "This means $one is equal to 1";
}

I don't understand exactly what you're saying with the [url]http://[/url] not going in the database. (I've never inputted full url's into the database). What code are you using and what is that code doing? I may be able to help you better by looking at the actual code.

As far as resources that are more than <? echo "hello world"; ?> but not as complex, you can try devshed's tutorials. They have an awesome tutorial called PHP 101. Starts basic and goes past that. I haven't read it in a while but I remember I really liked it.

http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/PHP101

Best way to learn is playing around and experimenting. If you're not sure about curly brackets, parenthesis, etc, best way is to just try stuff out. Also although intimidating at first, php.net is an awesome resource. When I started I didn't understand a thing, but it's a great way to look things up and the user comments are extremely helpful. mysql.com also has great online documentation.

Posting in forums is a great way to get help when you can't figure something out. I'll help whenever I can if you want to email me: [e-mail]. I don't have all the answers--like I said earlier, I'm still learning to--but i'll be glad too help if I can.

[theDog]

Originally posted by cgraz
For the site, if you have www.mysite.com in the database, and you want to add [url]http://,[/url] you could do

$url = "http://";
$url .= $row["url"];
header("Location:$url");

That's sorta what i did to display a list of links. But i was trying to concatenate inside the header() function, and it didn't work. I'll give your way a go.

Sigh... so many different ways to do things... one never knows which is wrong.

I don't understand exactly what you're saying with the http:// not going in the database. (I've never inputted full url's into the database).

Me neither. That's the next file in the program after i square this one away. My understanding is if you try to insert the string without preformatting the slashes make MySQL unhappy. Hence the functions to do the formatting and deformatting. shrug Maybe i'm unclear on that concept too.

That DevShed tutorial looks helpful. Funny i missed it as much as i patrol that site. Not ready for php.net... no no no....