Please help, MSWORD characters terror!

Dolemite50

Hi,

I have been struggling with this one for over a week now and still havent figured out whats going wrong. I have one page that allows members to upload a song, and another page that it uses as the form action page.
It has a field for Song Title and also for description. If somebody pastes Word Characters into the Song Description field like these quotes “its” , it tells them they havent entered a Song Title. The odd thing is I don't see why that error would say no Song Title because the Title is there but if the description has the characters, it seems to break the code and not make it think that there was a Song Title. Everything works fine with no msword chars involved.

I tried all of the functions found near the bottom of the html_eminities page on php.net but no go. I found this on the forum, and here is what I get:

$sdescr = str_replace("“", "\"", $sdescr);  

$sdescr = str_replace("”", "\"", $sdescr);

I tested using “its” as the description, and it said I didnt enter a song title. I added this after it:

echo $sdescr;

and it echoed as normal quotes! If I remmed out the str_replace lines, it echoed with the special quotes. If I remove the quotes in the description, all works fine.
Can somebody PLEASE tell me where my code might be breaking? Thanks much.

Form Action code:

						function prepIn($input) { 
						 $input = trim($input); 
    					if (!get_magic_quotes_gpc()) { 
       					 return addslashes($input); 
   						 } 
  						  return $input; 
						} 

					function prepOut($input) { 
					 $input = stripslashes($input); 
					return htmlspecialchars($input); 
					}

if (isset($_POST['submit_mp3'])) {	

		$stitle = prepIn($_POST['stitle']);


		$sdescr = prepIn($_POST['songDescr']);
		$sdescr = str_replace("“", "\"", $sdescr);  
		$sdescr = str_replace("”", "\"", $sdescr); 
		$sdescr = strip_tags($sdescr);


				if (!$stitle){	
				$error = "Sorry! You must enter a song title.<br>			
									$please<p>";										
									include ('errorinc.php'); 
										exit();	
						  }

				elseif (!$sdescr){	
					$error = "Sorry! You must enter a song description.<br>				
									$please";
									include ('errorinc.php'); 
									exit();	
						  }

thanks again.

Dolemite50

Is this caused from using a seperate page to perform the action?

I've tried everything, needing a guru here.

rehfeld

are you sure you have not mixed up the field named in your html?

Dolemite50

Positive. If I take out the msword chars in the description it works fine. I have been pulling my hair out over this one. I am getting furious customers because it is telling them they didnt enter a Band Name when they know they did. This is the craziest thing I've run into and its driving me nuts. Any other suggestions?

Thanks again.

Dolemite50

Is there such thing as unresolvable?

Dolemite50

Apparantly so, darn.

Roger_Ramjet

For one thing, I would not replace the word quotes, I'd just remove them completely. Not neccessary are they.

rehfeld

this works fine for me

php5.02
my server is sending this header for the charset:
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

tested using ie6 and firefox 1.0


<?php

function prepIn($input) {
    $input = trim($input);
    if (!get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
        return addslashes($input);
    }
    return $input;
}


$title = prepIn($_POST['title']);


$desc = prepIn($_POST['desc']);
$desc = str_replace("“", "\"", $desc);
$desc = str_replace("”", "\"", $desc);
$desc = strip_tags($desc);


if (!$desc) echo "no desc$desc<br>";
if (!$title) echo "no title$title<br>";

?>
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
<input type="text" name="title">title<br>
<input type="text" name="desc">desc<br>
<input type="submit">
</form>

check bugs.php.net for your version of php
it may not be a bug, maybe its a lack of functionality/support in your version, but i dont know all that much about charsets so...

Dolemite50

Hello!

Thanks again for the help, I am still struggling.
I am not on my own server and it is PHp v 4X.
I doubt I could request an upgrade to 5, but I think I could request what you mentioned about:
php5.02
my server is sending this header for the charset:
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Sorry for being so green, but what should I request from my admin?

Thanks again. 🙂

rehfeld

so you tried the code exactly as i posted it, and your still having the problem?

if so, did you check bugs.php.net for your version? if you dont know how to find your version, do phpinfo();

Dolemite50

Hi and thank you very much again!

I'm sorry, I didn't try your code because the only thing that I see different is that it's posting to SELF which wouldn't work in my case because it goes to a seperate page. Am I missing something else to try?

I checked my version and it is 4.3.10.

I REALLY appreciate the help. If you can help me get this resolved I will be permanently indebted to you.

rehfeld

try my code.

Dolemite50

No luck.

When you mention the char set, is that something that I need to set somewhere?

Dolemite50

Anybody?

I just need to know where to put his char set line.

I'm sorry, but I've been locking horns with this problem for months. 🙁

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Dolemite50
I just need to know where to put his char set line.

refehd was referring to PHP's default_charset configuration directive. This can be set in php.ini, httpd.conf, .htaccess, or with [man]ini_set[/man]. If you use the last, it would have to be one of the first things you do (because it has to go in the http headers).

Dolemite50

Thank you Weedpacket.

Can you please tell me what I would need to put in the htaccess if I am going that route?

Dolemite50

I still cant figure out how to declare teh char set in .htaccess.

Anybody?

Thanks a lot. 🙂

Dolemite50

OK,

I talked to my server admin and he says that the php.ini says this:

; As of 4.0b4, PHP always outputs a character encoding by default in
; the Content-type: header. To disable sending of the charset, simply
; set it to be empty.
; PHP's built-in default is text/html
default_mimetype = "text/html"
;default_charset = "iso-8859-1"

So apparently it IS using the correct charset?

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Dolemite50
OK,

I talked to my server admin and he says that the php.ini says this:

; As of 4.0b4, PHP always outputs a character encoding by default in
; the Content-type: header. To disable sending of the charset, simply
; set it to be empty.
; PHP's built-in default is text/html
default_mimetype = "text/html"
;default_charset = "iso-8859-1"

So apparently it IS using the correct charset?

Notice that the default_charset line is commented out. So it's not set (have a look in phpinfo - you'll see that there is no value for default_charset).

Dolemite50

Thank you very much WP,

I'll give 'er a shot tomorrow.