Inserting Data - Slight Problem

obrienkev

Hi all,

I am asking the database table to add data from a form to table if it is NOT already there.

Problem now is that if a field is blank it passes an empty value into database table. Why is this??

Code:


$result = mysql_query("select * from test where client = '$client'");

if (isset($client))

{

if (mysql_num_rows($result)<=0)

{

$result = mysql_query("insert into test values(NULL, '$client')");

echo mysql_affected_rows().' client inserted into database.<br />'; 

}

}

saraadmin

I assume that where you have:

if (isset($client))

the $client variable is the passed value. Note that isset() can still return true on an empty string if it exists.

Try

isset($_GET['client'])

(isset($client) && ($client != ""))

Your second condition is that there are no existing records in the table 'test' where the 'client' field is blank. Are you sure that is the case?

obrienkev

Basically the user enters data in a form.

The user enters the client in a textbox and hits submit.

I want to first of all check that the user entered data in client field.

Then want to check if that data is already in the client table.

Finally if it is not there already then the users data is added to the table.

So is what I'm doing in the code correct??

thanks Sara,

You have been a great help today!

saraadmin

Basically the user enters data in a form.

The user enters the client in a textbox and hits submit.

HTML:
<form method="get" action="process_form.php">
<input type="text" name="client" />

<input type="submit" name="submit" />
</form>

I want to first of all check that the user entered data in client field.

if (isset($_GET['client']) && ($_GET['client'] != ""))
{
    // valid data
}

Then want to check if that data is already in the client table.

The code we discussed before will do this:

    $find_client = mysql_query("select client from test where client like \"%" . $_GET['client'] . "%\" limit 1");

if (($find_client != null) && (mysql_num_rows($find_client) == 0))
{ 
    mysql_query("insert test (client) values (\"" . $_GET['client'] . "\")");
}

(put that code where I wrote '// valid data')

(Note that checking for matches with text values is often approximate. Unless your text values are actually primary keys, you can't guarantee that they will be unique or that two slightly different values (e.g. 'kevin' and 'Kevin') aren't supposed to be the same. (That was why I originally suggested working with ids).

MySQL provides the LIKE operator to help with this. It does case in-sensitive comparisons of values. You can also insert the '%' wildcard to help make matches more general.)

So is what I'm doing in the code correct??

It looks to me as if you're using $client as the passed value. Presumably you've used parse_url() or seomthing?

Another thing you've done which may cause problems is that you do your MySQL query to check for existing clients before you've checked to make sure the given client name is a valid string.