Variable URL truncation

ja1clark

I have been driven mad today by what seems like a simple problem.

I have a number of very long URLs that I store in to variables. These URLs are GET urls.

Once I have a URL stored they can be 300-400 chars in length.

If I echo $url it displays correctly.

If I use header("Location: $url");
the page correctly appears.

BUT If I try to place in a link <a href='$url' ></a>
The Url gets truncated after about 140 characters. The truncation is at the same point for each distinct URL but the number of charcters varies for other URLs (but not by much)

I tried cutting and pasting the URL straight in to the <a href and I get the same truncation at the same point which leads me to believe this has nothing to do with encoding/decoding which I have tried every which way.

Can anyone tell me what is going on and/or a workaround?

Thanks, Jon

cosminb

try this:

echo '<a href="'.urlencode($url).'">some link</a>';

Weedpacket

Such long URLs are unreliable anyway; some servers will chop them short. You shouldn't even be attempting to have URLs that long; why don't you find some more reliable means of passing data?

ja1clark

Have already tried to no avail urlencode(), urldecode(), rawurlencode(), rawurldecode() and a few others.

The $url variable I am talking about has already been urlencoded by the time it is called - here is a snippet of code

echo "URL = .'urlencode($url).'<br>";
$url = urldecode($url);
echo "URL = .'$url.'<br>";
echo "Link<a href=$url target='_BLANK'>Link </a>";
header("Location: $url");

The ONLY line that is truncated is the '<a href'

As for using a different method that is what I am requesting a suggestion for. I need to have a clickable link in a page that goes to these URLs.
The URLs are dynamically constructed and are not mine.

But why on earth would that one line get trunctaed?

ja1clark

P.S.
I have my own development setup using PHPEd on windows and this error also occurs on my hosted service which is using Linux.