Browser compatibility issues??

wushoes

Hi Guys....

I'm totally new to PHP, learnt it yesterday as a matter of fact...well not really learnt...just looked up some php syntax. I've had previous experience with ASP and SQl server. Anyways, I'm having trouble with one of my php pages...what it does is read all the users from my mysql db and echo them in to a table using a while loop. With this page, I also have a button next to every name so that I can delete the users from the db.

The page I will be talking about is found here: http://web.aanet.com.au/david/fresh/admin/del.php

Bascially I'll give you an idea of what the page goes through in terms of code.

$query="SELECT * FROM freshminds";

$result = mysql_query($query,$mysql_link);

From the results of that sql query, I get every single person found in the db and write it to the page in table format.

Next to each name on the page is an ordinary html submit button...whose name attribute is called submit. When it is pressed, a javascript msg box prompts the user to confirm deletion of the user from the db.

To this button, I assign the html attribute value to the users' userId from the db, so that when I click the button, I know what user I am dealing with when the form is processed. The form is sends all this information from del.php to the processing page del2.php where all the deleting code is found. userId is a field in the table freshminds. It is my primary key and thus auto-incremented.

The main guts of del2.php is as following

$queryselect="SELECT * FROM freshminds WHERE userId='$_POST[submit]'";

$querydelete="DELETE FROM freshminds WHERE userId='$_POST[submit]'";

$result = mysql_query($queryselect,$mysql_link);

$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$name = $row['firstname']." ". $row['surname'];

mysql_query($querydelete,$mysql_link);

echo "The user ".$name." was deleted.<br><br>";
echo "<a href=\"del.php\">Delete another user</a>";

(By the way, if there are no users in the database, just add some using http://web.aanet.com.au/david/fresh/admin/add.php)

Now here comes the problem...Whilst it works fine in firefox...it does not for Internet Explorer...any ideas? Now if you try it in IE, del2.php echoes to the page "User so and so was deleted." Meaning that it should have run the SQL statement found in the variable $querydelete. So the question becomes, why doesn't this delete sql statement execute in IE, yet run fine in firefox. Here's where my thinking is at at the moment, and correct me if I am wrong; the SQL statement MUST execute if programs when compiled run line by line. If it didn't run or had syntax problems, the compiler would return an error and stop compiling the page.

Also, another problem that is encountered in IE, but not in firefox is the following.

echo "The user ".$name." was deleted.<br><br>";
echo "<a href=\"del.php\">Delete another user</a>";

IE does not print out the variable $name, where $name = $row['firstname']." ". $row['surname']; Yet firefox prints out the name of the user deleted. The variable $name is definately set before the delete sql statement is run...meaning that the record of the user i want to delete is still in the db.

Any ideas?

Shrike

I should think it's because you are using <button><img></button> rather than a regular form submit button? Perhaps IE and Firefox deal with this in different ways.

wushoes

it perfectly complies with w3c standards for html coding...in fact...it was taken directly off the w3c standards site, so I shouldn't see why not. However, I will give it a go...and post back....

EDIT: I tried removing the img but still did not do anything...just as I suspected.

mrhappiness

w3c and ie are not best friends...

do a

echo '<pre>';
print_r($_POST);
echo '</pre>';

above your $queryselect and see which data is available

wushoes

adding the code and viewing in IE after pressing the delete button gives the following

Array
(
[submit] =>
)

Yes..it does print out the image. :S strange!

BTW....that url should be an image...

That code allowed me to pinpoint my problem, because running the same page on firefox gives me

Array
(
[submit] => xxx
)

where xxx is the userId number...that is , the value that was set to the value attribute of the button. So does anyone have any ideas of how to pass these values through?

Shrike

<input type="image" src="del.png" value="3" alt="Delete Michelle Ho?">

Since we're talking standards, only the form tag should contain the onsubmit="" attribute.

wushoes

I was just about to do that when reading the standards site!!

TheDefender

Instead of trying to define the submit button's value to the ID, consider using a hidden text field to hold that value. Then when you submit, check for the value passed by the hidden text form field rather than the submit button's value. There'd be a little recoding to be done, but wirth it to avoid the hassle.

Also, you should quote the index name in these queries... Php will properly identify it as the index name and is one less headache to try to troubleshoot.

$queryselect="SELECT * FROM freshminds WHERE userId='$_POST['submit']'"; 

$querydelete="DELETE FROM freshminds WHERE userId='$_POST['submit']'";

wushoes

Originally posted by TheDefender
Instead of trying to define the submit button's value to the ID, consider using a hidden text field to hold that value. Then when you submit, check for the value passed by the hidden text form field rather than the submit button's value. There'd be a little recoding to be done, but wirth it to avoid the hassle.

Also, you should quote the index name in these queries... Php will properly identify it as the index name and is one less headache to try to troubleshoot.
$queryselect="SELECT * FROM freshminds WHERE userId='$_POST['submit']'"; 

$querydelete="DELETE FROM freshminds WHERE userId='$_POST['submit']'"; 
[/B]

tried that didn't work

🙁

Shrike

The problem with using hidden fields is that they'd all get passed when the form was submitted. By the way I forgot to add a name attribute to the submit button.

TheDefender

Originally posted by TheDefender
There'd be a little recoding to be done, but worth it to avoid the hassle.

Yeah, that's why I threw in this little disclaimer....

OK, so if that's not an option for you, consider changing the button attributes around a bit, and just making it a standard button (not of the submit flavor) and then use an onClick event to submit the form...

EDIT: I recall seeing something like this in the past, and it was due to the fact that an image was used on the button. Have you tried it without defining an image for the button, and just leave it plain?

wushoes

I'm currently working on http://web.aanet.com.au/david/fresh/admin/delie.php

Using this page (delie.php) to do some testing...

wushoes

Originally posted by TheDefender
Yeah, that's why I threw in this little disclaimer....

OK, so if that's not an option for you, consider changing the button attributes around a bit, and just making it a standard button (not of the submit flavor) and then use an onClick event to submit the form...

EDIT: I recall seeing something like this in the past, and it was due to the fact that an image was used on the button. Have you tried it without defining an image for the button, and just leave it plain?

For example?

Shrike

Hmph I've just realised that Internet Explorer doesn't pass name/value pairs for <input type="image"...> tags either.

It seems that without some recoding the only choice is to use a standard submit button.

wushoes

Currently I have this

<BUTTON name="submit" type="submit" value="<? echo $row['userId']; ?>" title="Delete <? echo $row['firstname']." ". $row['surname'];?>?">Delete</BUTTON>

If I change that to this:

<BUTTON name="submit" type="submit" value="<? echo $row['userId']; ?>" title="Delete <? echo $row['firstname']." ". $row['surname'];?>?"><? echo $row['userId']; ?></BUTTON>

It works...:S But I don't want the button label to be a number (userId)! I want it to be the delete image or...the word delete!

Shrike

Originally posted by wushoes
It works...:S But I don't want the button label to be a number (userId)! I want it to be the delete image or...the word delete!

I think your stuck with it - buttons are not meant to carry data, they are meant to do actions.

If I were to tackle this problem I would have a checkbox next to each user and one submit button, then write some PHP code to read the checkbox values and decide what actions to take.

wushoes

yes that is true....hmmm check boxes hey.....sounds like some more thinking and a lot of re-coding to me! :queasy:

can radio buttons carry data? i think from memory they can

Shrike

Yes it is more work but more flexible in the end - since you can perform any number of actions for one request.

Radio buttons are designed for carrying data yes.

wushoes

if i grab all the check boxes that are selected (for a multiple user delete), and put all the userId's in an array...how can i perform the sql delete?

using a loop i suppose?

could someone demonstrate please...

could i have something like this

then to delete the ones selected...

<?php
$who=$_POST['user'];
foreach ($who as $id)
{
$querydelete="DELETE FROM freshminds WHERE userId='$id'";

mysql_query($querydelete,$mysql_link);
}

?>

or is there a function that allows me to do multiple deletes? I'm very rusty...i haven't programmed in server side for like 5 years now....and even back then...it was ASP...my SQL has gone down the drain...i only remeber the basics

wushoes

the following code i wrote works...woot! thanks guys.