Concatenating a string with < and >

[rrhandle]

How do I build a string that contains < and >

Here is a sample I took off the web:
$msg='<GetATMLocations xmlns="http://www.serviceobjects.com/"><PostalCode>20191</PostalCode>';

When I run it, all I get is 20191. I have run some tests, and it appears PHP does not like < >. Any thing I but between them is removed. Can you explain?

--Robin

[jasonmills58]

well, to get anything to show up in your browser from PHP, you have to echo or print it to the browser, with proper quotes:

print '<td align="center">'.$v.'</td>';

or if you don't like single quotes, you can use doubles throughout, but you have to escape the inside quotes with a \ like so:

print "<td align=\"center\">".$v."</td>";

The periods are used for concatenation, and you could break this statement apart anywhere, and concatenate it using the dot method. Just make sure you have your spacing right.

cheers!

[weekender]

i take it you're using echo, like

$msg='<GetATMLocations xmlns="http://www.serviceobjects.com/"><PostalCode>20191</PostalCode>';
echo $msg;

this should echo the whole text in $msg, but because parts of the string are in <>, the browser will interpret these as HTML tags. If you click on 'view source' in your browser, you'll see this.

so what you need to do is use [man]htmlentities[/man]

$msg='<GetATMLocations xmlns="http://www.serviceobjects.com/"><PostalCode>20191</PostalCode>';
$msg = htmlentities($msg);
echo $msg;

adam

[rrhandle]

Thank you! Worked like a charm. Brings up two other questions:
1) What is the difference between Echo and Print.
2) I am building this string to be a SAOP envelope that will be sent to a webservice. I assume the htmlentities will not be necessary for sending the SAOP message, just when I try printing something to the screen. Correct?

Thanks again.

[weekender]

1) print is very much like the c print family - print, printf, sprint, sprintf, fprint, fprintf... etc etc and can be used to put a message and then a list of variables to place in the message.

echo is just more simple, to me anyways.

2) SOAP should accept the string as is - htmlentities changes special chars such as < and > into there ascii (i think) representatives, such as space becoming %20 - so that the browser doesn't see them as tags. So leave as is, unless you want to display it.