Passing variables between pages

Shovelnose

I am sending variables from one page to another, currently I have managed this:

if ($validname == "true"){
	ob_start();
	header( "Location: thanks.php?name=".$name."");
	ob_end_flush();
	} else {
	echo "failed";
	}

This works ok for a single word but if I want to send a whole paragraph of text this is not suitable as it converts the variable into the link.

How can I best do this, I have looked at using hidden input fields but do not want to rely on the user to do anything.

Any help please

WinterDragon

make a form? Hidden field maybe... put that paragraph in there, make it a form pretty much, and use POST instead of GET, and submit it... should work as passing a paragraph

Shovelnose

Hi all

Can anyone elobrate on the use of a hidden field and how I can submit the details through my if statement.

Thanks

Tracer

WinterDragon

hehe thanks tracer, I thought he might have already knew about it... shrugs

Shovelnose

Cheers,

Don't get me wrong I am very familiar with forms, the question I have is that if I am already specifing the location using using the header location in my if statement should I be then duplicating this in the action of the form - and will the header location include the input field data.

I would think it does not and that judging by the example I would need a submit button, the one thing I did not want- i.e. user intervention....

Any other ideas out there???

mazsolt

If you want to call the new page with an URL, and you also want to pass some variables, you must encode them. The best choice is the urlencode() function.

<?php
$name=urlencode('ali abdul');
$city=urlencode('bagdad');
header( "Location: one.php?name=$name&city=$city");
?>

In the file one.php you may have something like this:

<?php
echo $GET['name'],"<br>";
echo $GET['city'];
?>

When you used a couple of words for a value, they were separated by a blank space. The urlencode use the plus(+) sign to encode the blank spaces.

Tracer

I had a similar problem once before.....This is how I solved It.

1) Store all your PHP Vars in a session/cookie
2) Use a JavaScript Redirect

The page I used this on generated a large amount of data (about 40 vars from a LONG SQL Query. I used this to display a PLEASE WAIT to the screen while the query ran, once the query was finished, php sent the browser the </BODY> tag and the javascript redirect took them to a reporting page.

Shovelnose

Thanks Tracer and mazsolt for your helpful replies.

I think the urlencode function will be best from the research I have been doing as it treats the data the same way as when passing data using form fields.

I have also seen the

htmlentities()

which will encode the html passed through.

If I have both normal user inut consisting of alphanumeric characters as well as html stored in the variable would this be a suitable option?

htmlentities(urlencode($message))