Spaces in the Database

danielhalawi

Can someone help me.

this is the echo I'm producing from a connection to my database

echo "$s $hl <a href=testcomingout.php?id=$id&subject=$s&level=$l&n1=$n1&n2=$n2>link>>></a>";

but when it comes out on the browser only the following part is displayed

http://www.myserver.co.uk/~skituals/testcomingout.php?id=43&subject=Coming

On the DB the subject is displayed as 'Coming Out' why did the PHP stop producing after 'coming'??

Thnxs for any help.

YappyDog

You need to enclose your href stuff within quotes. Since you didn't the html stops at the first space within Coming Out. Since you are using an echo and everything is already within quotes, you'll have to escape the inside pair.

echo "<a href = \"www.blah.com?stuff=Coming Out\">";

BuzzLY

Or... use urlencode():

$EncodedURL = urlencode("testcomingout.php?id=$id&subject=$s&level=$l&n1=$n1&n2=$n2");
echo "<span class=copy><u>$s</u></span><span class=white><br>$hl<br></span>";
echo "<span class=pinklight><a href=\"$EncodedURL\">link&gt;&gt;&gt;</a></span>";
//broke down to two lines to display better on this board...

This will fix any number of potential problems you might have in addition to converting all spaces to "+".

On a side note, I would suggest a couple of things in your code.

all attributes should be quoted, not just the href.
Props on using css classes, but since you are using them, do you really need to use the underline tag? Can't you just make that part of the style "copy?"

HTH

danielhalawi

I'm using the code you quoted, however the URL is being sent to the browser address as:

http://www.myserver.co.uk/~skituals/testcomingout.php%3Fid%3D44%26subject%3DAdvice%26level%3DCelebs%26n1%3DCamp%26n2%3D-+Advice

It appears in the status bar as it should with = rather than %3 and & rather than %26.

Can anyone see why this is happening?

BuzzLY

Actually, it's %3D for "=". Every character that is not alphanumeric is displayed as % followed by two hexidecimal digits to represent the character.

It shows up in the status bar the way it would show up in a browser -- translated back into it's characters. Unfortunately, it doesn't translate them back when you click the link...

I forgot that symbols like ?, =, and & would change too, and that can be a problem. My suggestion is that you urlencode() any variable that might have characters other than alphanumeric, then build your URL.

In other words, if you think the subject variable might have spaces or strange characters, then use:

$s = urlencode($s);

That should fix your problem.