How can I retrieve and display fields from MySQL to the value attribute of forms?

[NiChE]

Hi.

Let's suppose we have a table with many records like this :
CREATE TABLE ARTICLE (
ID INTEGER NOT NULL
, NAME TEXT NOT NULL
, CONTENT TEXT NOT NULL
, SOURCE TEXT
, ARTDATE DATE
, HITS INTEGER DEFAULT 0
, PRIMARY KEY (ID)
)TYPE=InnoDB;

I want to execute the following query: SELECT NAME,CONTENT,SOURCE,ARTDATE FROM ARTICLE WHERE ID=[some_valid_id ]

CONTENT and SOURCE are usually fields with text of many lines.

So I execute this code:

$sql="SELECT NAME,CONTENT,SOURCE,ARTDATE FROM ARTICLE WHERE ID=".$_POST['id'];
$connection=mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', '');
mysql_select_db ('DATABASE',$connection);
$result=mysql_query ($sql, $connection);
$vectorResult=mysql_fetch_array($result);
$name=$vectorResult['NAME'];

When I do 'echo $name', or 'echo $vectorResult['NAME']' it just works fine (the query has been executed), but when I want to to the following it just won't do anything:

echo "<form name=form_retrieve action=update.php method=post>";
echo "<input name=name_art type=text size=40 width=35 maxlength=35 value=".$name." >";
echo "<textarea name=contenido cols=100 rows=12 value=".$vectorResult['CONTENT']." >";
echo "<input name=fecha type=text size=10 maxlength=10 value=".$vectorResult['ARTDATE']." >";
echo "</form>";

I'm trying to display the data from the database on a form.

The best I could is to assign and display the first 4 chars of the whole string of "$name" in the value attribute, but that's it.

So I'm not sure how to retrieve the fields from MySQL to the value on the form.

Please help!

[laserlight]

You didnt properly quote your attribute values and you tried to set the value attribute of a textarea.

On the PHP side, you failed to validate $_POST['id'] and to handle special characters in the text retrieved from the database, but I suppose we can assume that you have already handled that on input.

if (isset($_POST['id']) && ctype_digit($_POST['id'])) {
	mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', '');
	mysql_select_db('DATABASE');

$query = "SELECT NAME, CONTENT, SOURCE, ARTDATE
	FROM ARTICLE
	WHERE ID=" . $_POST['id'];
$result = mysql_query ($query);
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

echo '<form name="form_retrieve" action="update.php" method="post">'
	. '<input name="name_art" type="text" size="40" width="35" maxlength="35" value="'
	. $row['NAME'] . '" />'
	. '<textarea name="contenido" cols="100" rows="12">'
	. $row['CONTENT'] . '</textarea>'
	. '<input name="fecha" type="text" size="10" maxlength="10" value="'
	. $row['ARTDATE'] . '" /></form>';
}

[NiChE]

Damn!, thanks laserlight. I can't believe i posted such a dumb thread.

In fact, to check for my $_POST['id'] I did the following:

if ($POST['id']==null) {
[INDENT] echo "Error ";[/INDENT]
[INDENT] exit;[/INDENT]
}
else {
[INDENT][INDENT] if (!is_numeric($POST['id'])) {[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][INDENT] echo "Error: the value is not a number";[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][INDENT] exit;[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][INDENT] }[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT] else {[/INDENT]
[INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][everything_else][/INDENT] [/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT]}[/INDENT]

Greetings from Colombia.