problem with urls - I think!

[yellowchimp]

Hello

I have used the following code (very kindly done for me by someone in this forum) to have my php page search a table and pull out a list of documents - which are then displayed as a list of titles (which use another field to make them clickable)

$connect = odbc_connect('conserve', 'sa', '');
$result = odbc_exec($connect, 'SELECT doc_title, doc_url FROM documents');

while ($row = odbc_fetch_array($result))
{

echo '<a href="' . $row['doc_url'] . '">' . $row['doc_title'] . '</a><br>';
}
odbc_close($connect);

this works brilliantly in the vast majority of cases, however for a few of my documents - the link does not work. I click on the title and it goes nowhere.

just to clarify:

I have a document called marine_heritage.doc in a folder called conserve the web address for it is

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/Consultations/marine_heritage.doc

but when I use the above code to access the database and the document I retrieve the title of the document that should be clickable through to the document. But it does not work . The address I get in the address bar is

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/charlotteresults.php#http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/Consultations/marine_heritage.doc#

I can't figure out why these few documents do not behave like the others and do not get pulled successfuly out of the database?

If anybody knows what I'm getting at or has any ideas about why I am having this little problem - any hints or tips would be much appreciated.

thank you

[tsinka]

Hi,

how does the complete <a href...> line look like ?

Thomas

[yellowchimp]

I tried to type in the full url but it seems to have been edited.

If you click on the links in my posting you can see the full url's in the address bar

[webdes03]

View the source of your page in your browser. Highlight the <a href> tag line for one that doesn't work, and paste it in here. My guess is it's a syntax glitch, but without seeing what the browser is seeing it might be hard to figure out. I had a smilar problem once with a script I wrote for someone, and the problem was with the name of the file, but I was reading the directory to get the file names... might be a similar problem though.

[yellowchimp]

hi

an example of the source is shown below

<a href="#http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/FISH_HER.doc#">Forum on Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) Response to the HER Consultation</a><br><a href="http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/A303draftorders.html#doc_types.xls#'Consultation responses'!C2">A303 Trunk Road (Stonehenge Improvement) Draft Response</a>

this is code for links to two separate documents. The first document doesn't work but the second document does. I notice the one that doesn't work has # # round it. I don't know how that got there. Is it something to do with how I entered the url into the microsoft access database. I have tried lots of different ways of entering the urls into the database - no luck yet thoygh.

Do appreciate you guys help on this :-)

[webdes03]

That's the problem. Your script is adding a # at the beginning of the filename, which makes your browser think it's an anchor to a section on the page, which makes it try to link to your current page, instead of going to a new document. It must be something with your database, since there's nothing in the script that would add that.

[webdes03]

Put this in a file on your server, and send me a link to it. I just want to see the raw data that the script is dealing with.

$connect = odbc_connect('conserve', 'sa', ''); 
$result = odbc_exec($connect, 'SELECT doc_title, doc_url FROM documents'); 

while ($row = odbc_fetch_array($result)) 
{ 
echo $row['doc_url'].'<br>'; 
} 
odbc_close($connect);

[yellowchimp]

thanks. I wonder what could be wrong with my database though?

I shall keep experimenting with it. It confuses me how it does it on some documents and not others.

[webdes03]

Put that above code in a file, be sure to add your password to the connection string (don't worry, I won't be able to see it), and upload it- then post a link to the file... call it whatever you want, test.php or something... Do you have AIM... might be easier than posting over and over on here...

[yellowchimp]

ok

i have put it on my server

here is the link

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/mike.php

[yellowchimp]

I did notice that the documents where the link does not work do not have the

#doc_types.xls#

bit inserted into the <a href

Also may be helpful to you to know that when I am in my access database. If I click on a link in the doc_url field then I get the message

"unable to open doc_types.xls. cannot open specified file"
it is interesting that the documents that will not link using the php script are the only documents that will open from within the access database if i click on the url in the doc_url field. This is all very confusing. These documents do not get that error message and will open. I guess I want all the documents to get that error message and then they will all be retrieved by the php script successfully!

[webdes03]

My guess is that all of the ones with a # infront of them on that list don't work. That # is actually stored within your database. You could remove it with a php script, but not knowing how the rest of your site and everything is structured, I wouldn't be able to really tell you how to do it. I'd look at your database before you do anything and see if that is actually stored. Your script that populates the database must be adding it or something.

[webdes03]

I don't know exactly what you are doing with this, and I'm not really familiar with access databases, more of a MySQL guy myself, but it seems like all you'd need is the URL, for example, "http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/A303draftorders.html", and not the rest of whats in that database record, "#doc_types.xls#'Consultation responses'!C2".

I'm not sure if "Consultation responses" is a label or something for that article, it if it... you should probably be putting that in a seperate column of the database... I'm almost certain that access is adding "#doc_types.xls#" to those records, but I couldn't begin to guess why.

[yellowchimp]

hi

In my access database I had the field that stored the url with the data type of hyperlink. But access was addinh #'s and words that it was getting from other tables oto the end of the url - or at the beginning in some cases!!

So I have changed the datatype to text and gone through and delted all the bizarre additions.

It all works just fine now.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction

:-)

[webdes03]

no problem... sorry I wasn't more help.