encoding URLs for W3C Validation

[adoti]

Hello everybody,
I have been pulling my hair out over this issue and hping somebody can help me out.

My provider is using "PHP Version 4.2.2".

I am recieving URLs via a RSS feed and I need to encode these so they pass the W3C Transitional code validation script.

Problem is when I endode the URL String, what I get is very weird! I get MY OWN sites URL prepended to the URL that I just encoded.

This URL I am putting in an HREF tag. If I simply output the URL to the screen it looks fine, no PREPENDED URL at the beginning. BUT when I put in IN the HREF tag, I get this strange behavior.

EXAMPLES:

Resulting source of URL after encoding:

http%3A%2F%2Fwww.43things.com%2Fthings%2Fview%2F384%3Ftest%3D1%26test2%3Dtest2

BUT when I rollover the link, in my status bar I see the following:

http://www.perculator.com/ http%3A%2F%2Fwww.43things.com%2Fthings%2Fview%2F384%3Ftest%3D1%26test2%3Dtest2

*notice the "http://www.perculator.com/ before the real desired URL. Where the heck is this coming from?

Like I said if I DONT put this code in the HREF tag it outprints fine, its only when I put it int he HREF tag..

Here is the PHP I am trying to use. I ran a bunch of tests.

<?php
$link1 = "http://www.43things.com/things/view/384?test=1&test2=test2";
$link2 = urlencode("http://www.43things.com/things/view/384?test=1&test2=test2");
$link3 = rawurlencode("http://www.43things.com/things/view/384?test=1&test2=test2");
$link4 = rawurldecode($link3);

?>
<a href="<?php echo $link1; ?>"><?php echo $link1; ?></a><br/>
<a href="<?php echo $link2; ?>"><?php echo $link2; ?></a><br/>
<a href="<?php echo $link3; ?>"><?php echo $link3; ?></a><br/>
<a href="<?php echo $link4; ?>"><?php echo $link4; ?></a><br/>

Viewing source, or viewing compiled page all show me a correct formetted URL. It's ONLY when I roll over th elink or actually click on it that I get the error page.

-A

[evi_one]

Try

$url = str_replace('&', '&amp ;', $url);

That should do the trick 😃

P.S. There should be no space between "amp" and the semicolon.

[xblue]

Did you take a look into the source code? I'd guess php does not prepend anything anywhere at all, it is just something the browser does: not recognising the link as absolute, it assumes it is a relative link which is supposed to point to some location on the current site.

[adoti]

Yeah, thats exactly whats heppening. The browser doesn't recognise the link as a full valid URL and prepends it with my local sites base URL. Possibly because the URL's : and //'s are getting encoded as well?

I tried IE and Firefox and both behave the same way. Very odd. There must be another way to do this no? How could that PHP method to encode be of any use then?

I wil probably follow evi | one's suggestion above and just rewrite the &'s.

I also found a workaround, that if I put the URL into a JavaScript open.window location script in the HREF tag, it works... but it's JS... 😉

[chrislive]

not sure if this will help:

$text = html_entity_decode($text);