Passing a complete URL including variables

darkside

I am trying to create a link that passes the complete, current URL including server queries to a new page. The purpose is that someone can complete a form to mail the URL to a friend. Therefore I need to capture the URL and embed it in the mail message.

I am having problems with the link being displayed in the new page. All the following works as intentded....

$url .= ".."; // sets path back to root
$url .= $PHP_SELF."?".$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']; // grabs whole current URL

if ($mail) {
print "<a href=\"?p=tell_a_friend&url=$url\" target=_blank>e-mail</a>"; // prints a link to the mail page
}

Note, 'p' is the name of the 'page' to include in my template.
The variable 'mail' in my example URL turns this link on for development purposes on the server. There is a link to 'e-mail' right at the bottom of the page.

On the new page, the URL is only diplayed as far as the first query. You can see it here...

http://www.gravity-slaves.co.uk/main/?p=show_article&article_ID=136&mail=yes
becomes
http://www.gravity-slaves.co.uk/main/?p=show_article
and the $article_ID is dropped!

Obviously the URL is 'escaping' at the first '&'. How could I stop this?

I can't just reference the article_ID as well since I would like this link to work site wide.

Any clues?

TIA.

sarahk

just visited your site, is it working now?

-- I was cautious about visiting your site... turned out to be devastating when I realised that it's now 9 years since I last entered any of those races. I used to race in sports women when Caroline Alexander was just starting out. She's had a awesome career! I'm home in NZ now and out of it all unfortunately. Congrats on a good site.

tekky

I believe you need to htmlentities($url) so that its not treated as 2 variables (the & in the $url var will be treated as a variable seperator)

otherwise you need to encode the $url in some way an then decode it on the page that you made to send the actual emails...

darkside

Yup - fixed! Sorry!

The function I was after was urlencode. The solution is below...

$url .= $PHP_SELF."?".$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];

if ($mail) {

print "<a href=\"?p=tell_a_friend&url=" . urlencode($url) . "\" target=\"_blank\">e-mail</a>";

}

Sarah,
Funny how things link up - the number of riders I meet through php. The sport of downhill has exploded in the last 5-6 years with bikes virtually like crossers now - 4 pot pistons and 9" travel! Don't forget the biking!
Cheers for the comments on the site.