Works on one server, but not on another. Is it because of a Pear module?

TrickyPhillips

Hello World,

I payed a programmer to put together a PHP website for me, and we're having trouble getting it working on my server. After data is posted on any page, it's not stored as a variable correctly. Here's an example of what she did:

<form action=results.php method=post><input type=text name=searchingred size=40>&nbsp;<input type=submit value=Search></form>

This form will submit data to results.php.

Here's a bit of results.php:

<?php

   $sql = "select * from search_terms where term = '$searchingred'";

   $result = mysql_query($sql ,$db);

   if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {

  $row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
  $count = $row[1];
  $newcount = $count + 1;
  $sql = "update search_terms set count = $newcount where term = '$searchingred'";

   } else {

  $sql = "insert into search_terms (term, count) values ('$searchingred', 1)";

   }

   $result = mysql_query($sql ,$db);

?>

This doesn't work, as the variable "$searchingred" is never declared. If I add $searchingred = $_POST['searchingred'] to the top, it works perfectly.

The script is working fine, on her server. I don't want to modify each page that has any form on it, so I'd like to know what she's using to do this. My guess is that it's some Pear module, or such.

Any clue as to what kind of goodie she has on her server?

Thanks,
Ron

paulnaj

Look up the section on pre-defined variables in the manual. It'll tell you that you'll never go wrong if you ALWAYS use the form ... $_POST['field'] rather than just $field.

Paul.

TrickyPhillips

Alright. I guess I'll have to convert all of the scripts that have data being posted to. 🙁

Thanks for the help. 🙂

paulnaj

Yeah, 'fraid so.

But if it makes you feel any better, had to do the same thing recently when I moved my company's website from one server to another ... it was built about five years ago, when I just a PHP newb.

Skull

turn register globals on

that way it will read $blah as $_REQUEST['blah']

its un-secure but it'll work, better to just change them all to $_POST['blah'] to be safe 🙂

TimTimTimma

1 function solves all your problems,

extract();

you could always go extract($POST); or extract($GET); that will make $POST['string'] into $string and $GET['var'] into $var. Best of all this great function requires does not require register_globals to be turned on. So you get what you want, without sacrificing security :-)