What is the code for a hypertext link?

timhall

In the tell-a-friend script at http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/tell-a-friend-script.htm how do I replace http://www.yoursite.com with a hypertext link???

The script does not allow me to use <a href="index.htm">MY TEXT</a>

justsomeone

You've got:

 $ttext = "
Hi,

A friend or colleague of yours, ".$name.", whose email address is ".$email." thought you may like to visit our site. ".$name." has used our Tell-a-Friend form to send you this email.

http://www.yoursite.com

";

The problem here is that you've started your quoted string with a doublequote, and so when PHP finds the next doublequote it assumes it's the end of the string.

Read through your code above. The first double quotes signify the start of a string, the first element of the string is a carriage return and then the word Hi and so on until the next doublequote after yours, . This doublequote marks the end of the literal string. The next piece .$name tells PHP to append the value of the variable $name to the literal string. the next piece ." has used..." adds another literal to the string... and so on. If you had <a href ="http://www.yoursite.com"> in the middle of a literal string, it would assume that the doublequotes after href= marked the end of a literal string, and it wouldn't have a notion what to do with http://www.yoursite.com as that's not a PHP command.

To get around this, you need to escape those doublequotes in the href. You do this by putting a backslash in front of them. This tells PHP that the double quote doesn't end the string literal, but is to be part of it.

 $ttext = "
Hi,

A friend or colleague of yours, ".$name.", whose email address is ".$email." thought you may like to visit our site. ".$name." has used our Tell-a-Friend form to send you this email.

<a href=\"http://www.yoursite.com\">Your Site!</a>

";

Or you could use single quotes in the href instead, since you're using doublequotes for the string literal:

 $ttext = "
Hi,

A friend or colleague of yours, ".$name.", whose email address is ".$email." thought you may like to visit our site. ".$name." has used our Tell-a-Friend form to send you this email.

<a href='http://www.yoursite.com'>Your Site!</a>

";

timhall

Thanks for the swift response. Unfortunately, niether options work fully. The script does run when I insert <a href=\"http://mysite.com \">MY TEXT</a> but the URL rather than MY TEXT is hyperlinked.

I also want the script to recognise a relative URL. The script runs when I insert <a href=\"index.htm \">MY TEXT</a> but in this case nothing is hyperlinked (I just receive a non-hypertexted index.htm).

justsomeone

take a look at your html source. See if you can spot what's going wrong from there.

timhall

No joy finding the correct code for a text hyperlink. The script only seems to hyperlink absolute URL's. Is there anything I can do to get the script to recognise and hyperlink a relative URL (index.htm)?