Passing hidden variables with POST problem

habbardone

I have a value that I want to pass to a script for displaying on it - prog.php

The value is held in $detail

$detail = "this is the message";

I am using a button in a form to trigger the script.

For some reason when I display the value in prog.php I only get the first word of the
value.

$detail = $_POST['x_detail'];

and later echo $detail;
produces "this"

Why is this and how can I have the whole sentence passed ?

Thanks

drew010

yeah, you need to quote the value string in your hidden field.
change
<input type="hidden" name="x_detail" value= <?php echo "$detail"; ?> >
to
<input type="hidden" name="x_detail" value="<?php echo "$detail"; ?>">

habbardone

Thanks
These quotations are really strange - sometimes you need them
sometimes not - is there somewhere I can read up on it to know when I should be quoting. I am sure that I also quote unnecassarily a lot !

drew010

well, the html standard says every value should be quoted such as <font style="something"> <span class="s1"> <a href="link">
basically the reason it was needed was because if you translate the code it turns out something like

how does the browser know that 'is' isnt another property of the input type. for example in <img> tags you can have <img src="image" ismap>

so the field needs to be quoted lke

that way the browser knows everything in the quotes should be the value of field.

stevesweetland

is there somewhere I can read up on it to know when I should be quoting[/B]

just do it all the time, cant go wrong.

laserlight

sometimes you need them
sometimes not

In certain cases (numeric attribute values) HTML 4.01 does make quoting attribute values optional, but otherwise quoting is generally required.

However, since XHTML requires that all attributes values be quoted, you should quote them, numeric or otherwise.

is there somewhere I can read up on it to know when I should be quoting

Check out the relevant W3C Recommendations at w3.org

habbardone

Does it matter if they are double quotes or single quotes ?
because the std seems to be double quotes but if you later decide to put them in php you need to escape them all. I'd prefer to just use single quotes and not have to change them. What do most people do about that ?

laserlight

Does it matter if they are double quotes or single quotes ?

Clientside, not really.
Serverside, well, htmlspecialchars() translates double quotes by default, leaving single quotes untranslated, but you could always set the option otherwise.

because the std seems to be double quotes

As far as I can tell, it isnt.

if you later decide to put them in php you need to escape them all

You dont if you use single quoted strings.

habbardone

Well what I meant by "std" is that many support s/w like HTML Kit
(the editor I use) put in double quotes when they write a bit of code eg a style type or a table set up etc. Maybe I can set it to use single quotes instead ?

So do you use single quotes all the time ? or do you escape the double quotes when echoing the HTML insied php ?
What do others do ?

Installer

Some do this:

echo "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"test\"
value=\"$value\">";

Others do this:

echo '<input type="hidden" name="test"
value="' . $value . '">';

At any rate, using double quotes around attribute values is common practice, if not standard.

habbardone

Thanks for the input