method="post" vs. tacking on the ? to a link's url

mikeycorn

So far all my experience in posting data has been working with forms and naming your form objects and then working with the variables on the form handler . . .

This time though, I'm working purely with links, no form objects and it's easy enough to tack the "?" and data to the URL, but how do I extract that data from the URL?

laserlight

Use the $GET superglobal array, or $SERVER['QUERY_STRING']

mikeycorn

Awesome, thanks!

(I'm confused though because I thought it was POST that was always dealing with stuff tacked on to the URL and that GET was more secure and the one that didn't have the data showing on the URL . . . )

As long as it's working for now, though. There'll be plenty of time to understand why it works. 😉

mikeycorn

Forget that last question.

More importantly:

How do I know what the array is inside $_GET

How do I set what get is looking for from my link?

Drakla

Originally posted by mikeycorn
I thought it was POST that was always dealing with stuff tacked on to the URL and that GET was more secure and the one that didn't have the data showing on the URL . . . )

No, it's the other way around. The $REQUEST array also contains everything sent to the script in $GET, $POST and $COOKIE and it's handy to do a [man]print_r[/man] of it when debugging.

mikeycorn

Originally posted by Drakla
No, it's the other way around. The $REQUEST array also contains everything sent to the script in $GET, $POST and $COOKIE and it's handy to do a [man]print_r[/man] of it when debugging.

Doh! I had it backwards. Okay. Thanks for the tip on the [man]print_r[/man], that will come in very handy I'm sure, thanks.

mikeycorn

What part of that $_GET array am I looking for, though?

When I'm building my series of links

function dspDayCell ( $day )
{
    return '<td><a href="http://www.domain.com/online-reservations.php?'
      .$day.'">'.$day.'</td></a>';
}

Do I tack something on to the link, kind of like how you name a form object, or is there a specific part of $_GET that provides access to (bad terminology here) the stuff to the right of the "?".

mikeycorn

Here's the answer for anyone else pondering the same question . . .

a URL ending in "?date=2005.06.18"

will pass the value to $_GET['date']