Cant use $_GET for variables ... need to change settings

Jabbamonkey

I had a webhost were everything ran fine, but the site kept going down. So, I switched webhosts to someone more reliable. Now, since I switched, all of my forms are not carrying variables from one page to the next. I learned that I can fix this by going into the code and adding this line for every field:

// Form sends variable "$id" from one page to the next
// On the recieving page, I add the following...
if(isset($_GET['id']))
{ $id = $_GET['id']; }

If there was only one form, and only a few fields, this wouldn't be an issue. However, the site has over 50 forms, and tons of variables, and it would take me FOREVER to go into the code and redo everything. Can someone tell me how to change the PHP setting to allow these variables without this line?

Please use layman's terms, as I need to explain this to my webhost (and I need to understand this). Thanks.

Houdini

You probably can't because it seems that register_globals is turned off on your new host (as it should be, because it is very insecure). all get variable and post variables that you used to acces with just the variable or field name must now be accessed witheither $GET'fieldname'] or $POST['vieldname'] where the fieldname would be a form field name or if you used something like passing a variable through the URL as in http://yoursite/some.php?user=Mary then you would use $_GET['user'] to see the value of 'Mary'.

halojoy

hello

maybe this would work?
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/web/php4registerglobal.html

Setting up a .htaccess file

If you want to continue using global variables,
you will need to create a .htaccess file in your site's main directory (or the main directory of your site that contains PHP scripts).
Your .htaccess file should contain the following line:
php_flag register_globals on

bradgrafelman

Sounds like on your old host, register_globals was enabled. This is a security risk, and you can find tons of information on that.

shrug I don't know... the only suggestion I would recommend is to fix your broken code. If you'd rather ignore the security risks and whatnot, just turn register_globals back on I suppose.

EDIT: Wow.. 3 posts at the same time... heh...

Jabbamonkey

I really didnt want to go through the site and fix the code ... I checked and there are 51 pages that have this problem. And it's not just one variable per page ... some forms contain 20 variables ... so, 20 per page, 51 pages ... that's alot of extra code.

Oh well ... probably would have to had done it eventually anyway ... ug.

Houdini

That is quite likely, register_globals have been turned off since 4.2.0. It is now just the accepted method of using them, most any server that is fairly new will also have the same so eventually you would have had to do it anyway, while you are at it do not try and continue to use 'short tags' ie <? and ?> instead of <?php and ?>!