single quotes gets replaced with question marks [text from db]

phpjaco

not sure if any one has had this problem before. I have for example

insert (text) VALUES ("'.$_POST['text']. '"); - it seems when i display the text that single quotes get replaced with question marks.

does this have to do with collation or magic quotes or something entirely different?

thanx in advance.

laserlight

Check these 'single quotes'. Are you sure they are not some Microsoft specific characters?

pppppp

try to use addslashes wen add the data to the database and stripslashes wen retrieving the data from database

phpjaco

REPLY 1

some client have said that the problem comes from pasting the text from microsoft word?

how do i check if it is a special character and how do i solve this?

REPLY 2
don't think it is a problem with the add slashes because double quotes work fine. but not totally convinced.

so i say addslashes($_POST['text']) before adding it to the db and use removeslashes when viewing it in a browser, should i always do this:


  foreach ($_POST as $key => $val) {
   $POST[$val] = addslashes($_POST[$val]);
  }

regardless on whether magic quotes are on or off?

laserlight

how do i check if it is a special character and how do i solve this?

Use a hex editor to find out what is the value of the problematic character. After that you can use [man]strtr/man to change it to the ASCII version.

EricC

phpjaco wrote:
REPLY 1
some client have said that the problem comes from pasting the text from microsoft word?

how do i check if it is a special character and how do i solve this?

I have a little javascript routine I run my textarea elements through before sending them onto a database. I was mainly concerned about single and double quotes being handle properly. You could expand it for other unicode characters I suppose. 🙂

function fixWord(fieldID) {
    // Word's goofy-freaking-character-encoding blows..
    var tval = fieldID.value;
    var tval2 = escape(tval);
    tval2 = tval2.replace(/%u201C/gi, "%22");
    tval2 = tval2.replace(/%u201D/gi, "%22");
    tval2 = tval2.replace(/%u2018/gi, "%27");
    tval2 = tval2.replace(/%u2019/gi, "%27");
    field.value = unescape(tval2);
}

phpjaco

will start using it soon, I take it fieldID is the POST['text'] for example?