Chopped Names..........

[kamy99]

I'm so embarassed to ask, I've totally forgotten how to do this, it probably has to do with lack of sleep and staring at the code for too long :o

I'm retrieving a list of countries from db to a dropdown menu. All is fine, except when I submit the form the country name gets chopped.

For example: "Germany" would go through perfectly, but "Republic of Ireland" becomes Republic.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp 😃

[mikeatrpi]

You can try to urlencode() the names straight out of the database.

[kamy99]

I've tried urlencode, it adds extra characters between the names.
Republic of Ireland becomes Republic+ of+ Ireland .............

😕

[mikeatrpi]

What happens if you urldecode() on the other side? Is that where you get the plusses?

[kamy99]

Maybe some code helps🆒

Here's the snippet that retrieves from db:

while($getCountry=mysql_fetch_array($sql))
	{
	echo "<option value=".$getCountry['CountryName'].">".$getCountry['CountryName']."</option>";
	}

This is where it gets displayed

<input type="text" name="BillingCountry" value="<? echo urlencode($Country); ?>" readonly="Yes">

This way, URLENCODE is not doing anything. :eek:

If in retrieval i use urlencode($getCountry['CountryName']), then in the second page I get the plus signs........

If I use urlencode in both places, I get % and other characters.......

Any ideas?

[mikeatrpi]

while($getCountry=mysql_fetch_array($sql))
    {
    echo "<option value=".urlencode($getCountry['CountryName']).">".$getCountry['CountryName']."</option>";
    }

<input type="text" name="BillingCountry" value="<? echo urldecode($Country); ?>" readonly="Yes">

What does this do?

[feldon23]

Ok, I'm kinda new to PHP, but since you are using the "GET" method, then everything sent on the form goes into the URL.

If your form is filled out by the user like this (or a combination of read-only and editable fields):

myname = "Elvis Presley"
email = "[e-mail]"
location = "Republic of Ireland"

Then when you submit the form to result.php using "get" method, here's the URL you get:

http://www.mywebhost.com/result.php?myname=Elvis%26Presley&email=[e-mail]&location=Republic%26of%26Ireland

This is normal for how "get" works. Now what you do is:

$myname = htmlspecialchars(urldecode($GET['myname']));
$email = htmlspecialchars(urldecode($GET['email']));
$location = htmlspecialchars(urldecode($_GET['location']));

htmlspecialchars deals with <, >, ", ' and &
urldecode changes all the %xx back into ASCII

[kamy99]

I'm using Post as my Form method.
I used

<? echo htmlspecialchars(urlencode($Country)); ?>

to display the country , but still it gets chopped.

This is becoming more troublesome than I thought..............

[feldon23]

Ok that's bizarre.

You shouldn't need to encode or decode anything going through POST. I know I sure as heck don't. I've got PARAGRAPHS that come through unscathed.

Maybe if you attach the entire PHP script we can look at it?

[mikeatrpi]

Not encode, DEcode...

<? echo htmlspecialchars(urlDEcode($Country)); ?>

Try that and let us know what happens.

[feldon23]

Why is he having to urldecode a value that came through $_POST?

[mikeatrpi]

Kamy said it is showing up with +'s in the middle of the strings. I'm taking a guess here but decoding is better than trying to urlencode it before printing it. And is Kamy using htmlspecialchars on the output?

This isn't a problem with magic quotes, is it? I've never had any trouble getting data via POST. View your source code when the page is rendered and maybe check the strlen() to make sure all the data makes the transition. I'm sorry, that's all I can think of.